He Takes a Moon
by Anti-Logic
Summary: Hater gets lost. Wander tells stories. Eventual Wander/Hater, with a dose of alien fairy tales and worldbuilding on the side. COMPLETE.
1. Preface

Mostly this fic is a chance for me to a). write weird fairy tales b). jam in all of my sci-fi worldbuilding fixations and c). hint aggressively at my headcanons without explaining any of them!

I'm posting this on my cartoon tumblr (sea-tonic) as well; that version will probably update more quickly. I promise one day I'll write normal shipping fic.

I also should mention a slight choking warning for this chapter.

Anyway!

* * *

He takes over a moon and it's beautiful.

Dirt, dry, dust. Red like brick, like the buildings on Trenelli 4, like the rusted waterfalls of Madorex that he discovered when he was nothing but an upstart on the cosmic scale of things, wandering from planet to planet hoping to find chinks in the power structure that he could exploit.

A long time ago, that.

Now his dictatorship is galactic in scale, and he comes down on a planet with the force of an army, minions ready to jump with almighty anticipation of taking a world by storm, simple as breathing, simple as the tongue of the mothership rolling out and laying everything low.

The conquest of Artellus would have been perfect, like so many victories before (the people live underground; they might not have even seen him coming), but something goes wrong.

The Watchdogs march out, two-by-two, directly into the entrance tunnel they've pierced into the skin of the planet via laser beam. Nothing out of the ordinary there – the fluctuations in the bridge readings, there and gone in a flash, could be attributed to the dense upper atmospheric layer they passed through, or the incompetence of one of the junior officers. He has the communications officer who brings him the report booted from the hovering vessel from a hilarious height for interrupting crucial monologue prep time.

He's counting down the moments until his big entrance on the planet's surface – he's the last one onboard the ship, as it should be, as it always was – when something otherworldly slams into the titanium plating and carries the giant skull 50 kilometers to the northeast.

The ship's huge tongue trails behind, and the jaw unwittingly bites down – Hater feels its phantom blood welling in his mouth. Sixteen seconds later, before he's had time to stand upright again, another force-electric blast sends his ship spinning out of control, ripping across the tops of forests, clipping the sides of desert plateaus. He's slammed against the ship's wall from the sheer momentum; all attempts at resistance are met with equal and opposite force. This world, he thinks distantly as he tries not to choke on the laws of physics, is protected by some kind of magnetic sphere he's never seen before.

The ship climbs higher. He doesn't know where he is. Mountains reach towards the viewscreens, trying to throw him down.

At some point he must lose consciousness, because when he wakes up his ship is split and smoldering. He lies in dust, dry and red. The stars are out in force, though he can also see Artellus' giant sun. The curved horizon is closer to his prone body than it would be on a planet of Artellus' size.

The impudent hunk of rock has thrown him away. Deposited him on a wretched, neutral, utterly inconsequential moon.

He struggles to stand, supporting himself on the wreckage of his ship. It burns too passively. He chalks the phenomenon up to thin atmosphere, but "breathing" has never been high on his list of priorities so he doesn't worry.

He finds a pitiful, charred flag lying not far from the wreck and sets it upright.

He takes over a moon and it's beautiful.

x

It takes him, by his reckoning, three hours in Intersolar Standard Time to find the cave.

In those hours he is buffeted by rough winds, no doubt the effects of the blasts he felt on the planet's surface. It's unusual for a moon to have an atmosphere at all, much less one with momentum. Grains of red sand barrage his eyes and bite at his cheekbones, trying to make him smooth.

The Watchdogs do not make contact, though Hater suspects it would be tough to get a signal through those thick layers of yellow cloud on Artellus. It occurs to him that Peepers may not even know he is gone – the planet's people live in darkness, and Peepers led the charge down the deep, deep tunnel to the well-defended metropolis that Hater had coveted. He may not realize anything's wrong until the mop-up, when it becomes clear that Hater hasn't done his customary gloating yet.

Either way, it's become clear why the people shun life on the surface; with the possibility of being blasted off into space at any moment, who could stay?

But. Returning.

From the outside, the cave looks like a shallow crack on the side of a low incline, but he can see the rocky floor inside dropping off to create a room he may even be able to stand in. With a bit of contortionism he manages to shove himself in feet first, only getting stuck once – his robe betrays him, catching on the ledge and rising up past his waist as he dangles there, boxers bared to the darkness. With a grunt he pushes himself the rest of the way through, awkwardly tilting his head sideways to avoid catching his jagged yellow bone prominences on the stone.

Once he fixes his robe and gets his footing on the cave floor, he finds himself at eye level with his entranceway.

He hears the scatter-scraping sounds of pebbles moving behind him.

He catches his breath – he's found the lair of some insatiable beast, he's going to die here in infamy and stupid _Peepers _is going to take control of his hard-earned empire, the universe is so unfair to him, how dare–

"Hiya, Hater!"

He closes his eyes. He prays to some unknown evil deity, begging for the power to undo whatever awful knot in time and space led to this precise moment and every iteration of this moment that came before it.

"Ya know, I think the stars are really an improvement. I like the color combination too."

Heat rises to coat Hater's skeletal face as he realizes what exactly Wander is complimenting. He whirls around to face him, fists clenched at his sides. "How _dare _you approve of the color of my underwear!" he roars.

Wander is sitting against the wall, a small fire stuttering in front of him. His banjo is on his lap, though at the moment he isn't playing – his hands pillow the back of his head against the harsh stone. "I like that kinda burgundy color," he says as though he hasn't heard. "I think it sets off your eyes real nice, too." His face is the picture of serene grace, flickering in the firelight, and Hater wants to kill him possibly more than ever.

For now he settles for looming, moving close enough for the side of his robe to brush the outermost kindling of Wander's pitiful little fire. "What," he growls in his most intimidating interrogation voice, "are _you _doing here?"

"Same as you, I reckon. Seein' the sights. Or I guess, I _was _seein' the sights on Artellus, but we had barely gotten to the surface before some great almighty wind blew me away!" He sounds absolutely delighted by this turn of events, and Hater is disgusted.

The use of the "we," however, reminds him of something important. "And where is your little Zbornak friend?" he asks, sneering his words so he doesn't feel the impulse to glance anxiously over his shoulder for signs of the powerful creature.

"The way I figure she's still on the planet," Wander muses, tilting his head back in thought. "After we were separated I saw her grabbing on to some tree – or maybe it was a moldy statue? – anyway, she's so strong that she must have made it through that nasty turn of the weather."

There are so many questionable elements of this story that Hater doesn't know where to begin: Wander's problems describing the scenery, his referring to a severely unstable magnetic field as "nasty weather," or his conviction that his companion could fight a planet and win.

Instead he says: "You're alone then," and stretches himself as tall and imposing as his vertebrae will allow, leaning over Wander's tiny body and leaving him in shadow. His smile, he has been told, is terrifying to creatures of Wander's size.

"_Good."_

He thrusts his arm out and grabs the Nomad by his throat, raising him up to eye level. "Now I can finally _deal_ with you, without your knight in shining bridle coming to the rescue!" He shakes him, and the banjo slides down Wander's body and lands on the ground with a series of musical thuds.

The wind outside howls against the rocks.

Wander, to his outrage, does not look upset. He shrugs his shoulders (a difficult feat considering that Hater's fist is fixed around his neck) and smiles ruefully. "I'm glad we got to meet up again like this," he says, wheezing slightly. "But ya know, you're right, we should probably wait for Sylvia before we do anything _really _fun. It'd be unfair to her, right?"

"What do you not _understand _about this situation?!" Hater howls, shaking Wander like a rag doll. "She's not going to save you!"

Wander rolls his eyes while still managing to look too friendly, somehow. (What are his neck muscles made of, that this isn't hurting him?) "That'd be a first, wouldn't it?"

Hater opens his mouth to argue. Then he blinks and closes it again.

Wander is obviously a dangerous presence capable of introducing chaos to previously-controlled situations, disrupting the social order, and instilling revolution in local populations. Some days Hater thinks of him as some kind of ultimate test, while on other days it's obvious that he is a cosmic joke at Hater's expense.

Either way, while Wander circles some infernal axis of chaos, his loyal companion is the force that orbits _him,_ flinging herself around and around again to barrel all obstacles out of Wander's way. She is his moon and his guardian and his escape route. It's like clockwork, and it happens fast.

He thinks of how long it will take for Peepers to even realize anything is wrong. Past that, the search will take ages. His species doesn't have many physical demands, but eventually he will need to _eat._

Wander is smiling at him in a way that Hater hesitates to describe as "knowing," because Wander shouldn't know anything at all.

He is loath to admit it, but the Zbornak could fight a planet and win.

He drops the Nomad to the ground, where he begins to cough and wheeze.

"So she'll find you," Hater sneers. "Fine. She'll find me too. And your little _morals _will stop you two from leaving me stranded here."

Wander takes longer than anticipated to recover, for all the lack of concern he displayed while being threatened – his breath rasps as he massages his neck. "Sure, Hater," he says, which sends him into another bout of coughs. Each intake of breath seems shaky.

What a bizarre species.

Once he can control his breathing, he looks up at Hater's disapproving face and smiles. "You know what we could do," he says, reaching for his banjo. He still sounds oddly out of breath. The firelight plays in the crevices of his face, gleams against his shining teeth.

"We could tell stories."


	2. The Taken Moon

In which I get to make these dorks narrate a fairy tale. Don't own, etc.

* * *

"Lessee here. Moons." Wander tucks his legs beneath his lap, leaning back against the rock. "Moons. Moons moons moons. Stories about moons."

Hater sits hunched up against the opposite wall. Unfortunately, this doesn't give him much space; the cave is small enough that Wander's little fire is equidistant between the two of them. No telling where the sticks came from.

"I know I've got a good yarn or two that'd be _perfect _for this situation. They're tucked away somewhere in here" – Wander pokes at his own forehead – "but you gotta gimme a second to pick up steam. I know there's one from…oh, what planet was it, they had the story of the…Kidnapped Moon? The Borrowed Moon?"

"What about the one where you stop talking for five minutes? Five literal minutes is all I ask. Five of them."

"Uh-oh, looks like somebody's bein' a grrrrumpy grumpster. Listen, there's nothin' that passes the time quite like a story. You had stories on your planet, right?" He strums his banjo absently, and the sound of it grates against Hater's senses.

"Of course I did!"

"Ooh, what kind?" He leans forward in a quick, fluid motion, excitement painted right into his features. "Romances, ghost stories, nursery rhymes? Didja have _adventure _stories, with princesses and knights and–"

"They were for _children!_"

"I _love_ kid's stories! There's something real special about what a group of folks decides to tell to its kittens, ya know? Can you tell one to me?"

"Nobody expects you to be able to recite them as an adult!"

Wander seems to take this into consideration, shifting back towards the wall.

"Well, it's not really _reciting _as much as it's…" He raises a hand to trace the shape of some intangible concept in the air. "It's more like bringing 'em to life. You kinda gotta follow the general plan of the thing – or don't, if you don't wanna – and you just fill in the right words as you go based on what you're feeling that those words should be!" He plants his hand next to his mouth like he's sharing a great secret, fire flickering in his over-wide eyes. "And _that _is the key to expert storytelling! I'll give you an example. I don't rightly remember the beginning of the story I'm trying to tell, but I can sort of wing it until I get the rhythm down and all the characters fixed in place."

Hater's hands clutch at the dirt and pebbles beneath them. "Listen to me! I don't care about your storytelling secrets! I do not _care _about 'passing the time' or 'getting to know each other' or any of that other stupid, crappy…" – he struggles to define the repulsive display before him – "…crap! It's crap. It's so…"

Something penetrates his train of thought. "Wait. Wait a second."

He draws himself up in indignation, glaring down: "You're just going to _change _the _beginning?"_

The fire crackles as a stick breaks in two, throwing up sparks. Wander stares at him. "Uh…why not? It's not like this'd be the first time a story's changed hands. You gotta…add your own flair, you know?"

"But you can't just _change _the _beginning! _That's…that defeats the purpose! What's the point of saying you're telling a specific story if you're just going to make it all up anyway?"

"Hey now, I'm not gonna make it _all _up! Just enough to get us started. Lessee…I think we can start on the bonding day. No! We'll start a year before the bonding day."

"What bonding day?!"

Wander holds up a placating hand, eyes primly closed in a way that Hater reads as very condescending. "I'm gonna tell you, now hold your horses!"

"No you won't." He crosses his arms. "You're going to tell me some awful thing you've made up off the top of your head. Then you're going to graft it onto the actual, _legitimate_ story, and that one will become awful by association."

Wander is looking at him curiously now, as though he isn't sure how to handle the situation. Under other circumstances Hater would appreciate that; now it just seems insulting. "Uh…would you rather I just…pretend I made the _whole _thing up?"

"Oh, so now you're gonna _plagiarize." _

There is a moment of blessed silence wherein Hater thinks he has finally shut the little feather duster up.

Then Wander starts laughing.

" Shut _up!" _he commands. This is surprisingly ineffective. Wander is wheezing again, laughing and clinging onto his banjo for dear life.

"I'm s-sorry!" he says, wiping an honest-to-god tear from his eye. "It's just – well, you're an evil emperor! Why do you – not that you shouldn't! Please understand me, I know it's a real concern! But I'm just a bit surprised you feel so strongly about copyin' other people's fairy tales, is all!"

"It's lazy," he grumbles. The words come out less loudly than he wants them to. To his quiet horror, he feels his cheeks heating up.

"_Ohhhhh_," Wander says, voice fluctuating from honeyed to grating and back again. He's still smiling at Hater in an absolutely disgusting way. It's like he's _humoring _him, which is both unacceptable and flat-out _disturbing._ "Okay, I understand. I'll be real careful not to take credit for the rest of it, okay?" The words sound breathier than they did before his outburst, like his lungs are still catching up.

"Take the credit if you want, it's probably a stupid story anyway," Hater snaps.

"Aw, don't be like that, you might like it!"

Hater refuses to respond (or even to _look _at Wander), so a brief pause follows. Eventually he hears a few staccato notes – individual strings vibrating, soft and brittle, like Wander is just trying them on.

"Anyway, fairy tales are a bit different than other stories. Most planets have 'em in some way or another." Instead of strumming his banjo, he plays_ pizzicato_ – plucking quickly and quietly at the strings, fingers moving in seemingly random patterns to weave together some gentle melody behind his blathering. It doesn't sound polished, or even (in Hater's expert musical opinion) very _good. _It just sounds soft and light. "They always say somethin' special about the people tellin' 'em. You can't say they come from just _one_ person's head, because everybody tells 'em to each other and everybody forgets parts or changes parts or decides to leave out the parts that nobody agrees with anymore!"

"That's not how it works," Hater can't resist replying. He feels certain that banjos aren't meant to be played like that, either. Wander is an agent of chaos, even in his own field.

"Well. You just tell me what I do wrong, okay?" He serenely adjusts his weight to sit cross-legged, closing his eyes as though in meditation. His final deep breath ends on a slightly rasping note that Hater doesn't have time to think about before–

"_Once! Upon a time!"_ The words are sharp, grand, and _vibrantly _enthusiastic (Hater certainly does not jump). Wander's eyes snap open, locking onto Hater's own, and a mischievous grin engulfs his features. "Once upon a time – or, as the planet's super-special traditional opening goes: 'There were gods in the dirt, and they watched us.' There were gods in the dirt and they watched us, the story starts, and we find ourselves in the midst of a heat wave in an ancient island kingdom, before the continents were united into one people, before the stars came down and granted wisdom to the common folk, and before the aurora shone bright over the Vast Cliffs.

"There was a beautiful young man – a prince, I think it was – and he was betrothed to be bonded to this beautiful builder's daughter. (You gotta understand that this was a common thing on their planet – the strength and loyalty of a builder's family was almost as honorable as being born to take a throne.) Anyway, the prince was pledged to be bonded to this clever builder's daughter, and at first they weren't so into the idea. They met by chance at a tournament held in the prince's honor – both were too young to fight, but they kept on placing bets on opposing warriors and that led to a bitter rivalry between the two. (The planet that tells this story is fond of both betting and tests of strength, you should probably know.)

"Anyway, the two of them became bitter rivals until one day they bet on the same warrior. Then when the warrior won the tourney, they went to the celebration feast and ended up dancin' all night together. The prince watched her, flaxen antennae whirlin' around all pretty, and the girl admired the beautiful color of his secondary eyelids. They decided then and there that they would be the most bee-you-tiful couple the planet had ever laid eyes on, and they set about to proving it: goin' everywhere hand-in-hand, writin' each other poetry, attendin' festivals and placin' wagers together. Their first date was to a gambling hall, the second to a joust, the third a lovely picnic on a hilltop overlooking the city, where she leaned in real close to his face and–"

"What _is _this," Hater grinds out in horror.

A change had come over the Nomad's face while he was speaking – grin manic, gaze too intense on Hater's face. He had seemed electrified, fascinated by the words coming out of his own mouth. Enraptured and _aggressive _about it, as though every syllable were a trickster's spell and Hater was their target.

Now Wander blinks, visibly pulled out of the story. His grin stops being so hectic, melting instead into something soft and dreamy. His eyes are no longer twin bolts of misguided energy; he leans back.

The wind roars outside. Hater is distinctly uncomfortable.

"Oh, you know, just settin' the scene up real pretty! I figured we could use a little time to get to know our young lovers and the way they care so gosh-darned much about each other!" He cups his chin in his hand.

"No. That is the _last _thing we need. If you're going to talk, at least get to the _real _story, and leave your pathetic romantic fantasies out of it."

Wander shrugs. "Sure, Hater. We can move things along, if'n I can just remember where I left off. Oh! Alrighty then." He takes another deep breath, strumming an entirely-too-casual chord that accompanies the second leap into that bizarre energy (his storyteller's persona? A trance? Plain and genuine _excitement?) _that soon overtakes him as he falls into the meandering, informal rhythm of the words. Hater shifts cautiously against the wall.

"Anyhoo, not long before the bonding was set to occur, a terrible monsoon came roarin' into the island country. This monsoon had a name, too, so you _know _it was trouble. The people called it Eats Eyes in their language, and it came back every fourteen years to demand tribute from the royal family."

"The same monsoon…came back every time."

"The very same! And ol' Eats Eyes was a real nasty thing, too. He would rip into the houses on the coastline, destroyin' everything in sight unless the Queen or King came down to reason with 'im and offer up part of their treasury.

"Well, this year just so happened to be a poor year for farmers, fishermen, and traders all. So there just wasn't enough in the treasury to make Eats Eyes happy! Enraged, he captured the prince as punishment, sweeping him up in a great gust of wind and carrying him away to the stars (which is where Eats Eyes lived when he wasn't busy terrorizing the planet). So he stuck the prince in the High Sea (which was how they thought of outer space before they learned about space travel – like a dark ocean, calm and deep). He gave him an underwater palace, and sentenced him to exile for the rest of his days."

"The end?" Hater asks hopefully.

"Nope! 'Cuz then the builder's daughter decided to go save her fiancé!"

"Ugh. Of course she did."

"Their love," Wander intones reverently (still not breaking eye contact with Hater, which definitely isn't making him twitchy at all), "was just that strong."

"Anyway, the builder's daughter went to the Queen and King to get their blessing, and they gave her a beautiful jewelry box made out of the bones of a Tincter Tree (which I don't need to tell you is a _pretty_ big deal) and told her not to open it until she was in her fiancé's prison-palace." Here Wander pauses, a faraway look crossing his features. The tip of his tongue sticks out of the corner of his mouth, as though he can taste something that Hater can't.

"Lemme tell you," he says, and the sudden quietness in his tone throws Hater for a loop. "This girl was somethin' else, if she made it that far without looking inside."

The pause extends. Wander doesn't blink. Hater, at a loss and reluctant to admit it, shifts uncomfortably over dirt and stone.

A twig snaps and breaks in the fire, catching Wander's attention. Hater is disgusted with himself for being so relieved to be out of the Nomad's line of sight. He feels as though he's coming back into his senses, like this cave possesses an eerie power that could control him if he let it.

"Well wouldja look at that?" Wander says in his normal tone. "Could use a bit more fuel – the fire doesn't wanna burn too high out here." He pulls off his hat and reaches inside, rummaging around to pull out–

"A fire extinguisher?" Hater asks, deadpan and skeptical. Wander looks as much at a loss as he does.

The Nomad shrugs. "Eh. The hat gives you whatcha need. Maybe something's gonna catch fire." He sets the large canister to his left against the wall. "Anyway, where were we?" He coughs and then frowns, as though considering something very ponderous. "I think…we're gonna have a demonstration of what I was talking about before, where you can change the stuff that nobody agrees with. Because in the version I got told, the girl doesn't open the box until the very end. But I don't like that story."

"But it's the _original _story."

"Nope," Wander says absently, plucking at his banjo strings again. "Stories all come from other stories, and anyway, what's the fun of getting out and exploring the universe if you only look at the stuff people _tell_ you to look at?"

Hater wants to argue, just by nature of the bizarre situation he has found himself in (which he avoids thinking about too hard, lest the absurdity of it all drive him insane). But he can't think of a good counterargument that Wander wouldn't dismiss due to his apparent fondness for anarchy in all things, stories included. Instead he sits and waits for the awful voice to start up again.

"So the girl opens the box as soon as she gets to the seashore, because she's curious! And out comes a…a flying hippotopian! Yep! And the hippotopian invites her to fly up to the High Sea with 'im!"

"Hippotopians don't fly," Hater tries halfheartedly.

"Well, this one did. And the girl and the hippotopian flew up to the High Sea and searched for _ages _for the underwater prison-palace of the prince! They asked directions from every wise star, and even took a detour in the Sun Labyrinth that, accordin' to this planet's myths, circles the center of their system. Now, I guess in some versions of the story, you get to hear all of the different adventures that the girl had up there. But I can't rightly remember the ones that were told to me. So let's just say that she fought off creatures big and small, and made friends with the great empresses an' warriors an' scientists of the High Sea! And, after fourteen long years, they found the dark, cold prison-palace of the prince – just in time for Eats Eyes to be down on the planet's surface again."

"So the girl just _happens _to find her fiancé just as the typhoon is out of the way causing chaos on the planet?"

"Almost! But they were a little bit late, ya see – Eats Eyes was on his way back _up. _He caught them, just as they were prying the bars off the prince's window." Wander whispers this part, giving Hater a look weighted with drama, as though he expects him to be taken in by this dangerous turn of events for their young heroine. His body rocks just slightly – it's visible in the eerie way the fire's shadow flows back and forth over the crevices of his face, leaving parts of him ferocious-bright and drenching others in fluid darkness.

Hater doesn't know why he asks it. Maybe because he wants to get this piecemeal abomination of a story over with, or he wants to hear how badly Wander botches the ending, or it seems like the natural response to this kind of lull. Regardless, it's with a terrifying lack of conscious control that he feels his hard jaw moving to form the words:

"Then what happens?"

Wander looks briefly, brightly surprised. The wind howls even harder above them, bits of chilled air and sand stuttering in at intervals from their slim entranceway.

Then Wander smiles at him like they're the only two people in the world. (This being a relatively small moon, it's likely to be true.)

"The girl," he says with a flourish, "challenged the typhoon to a wager."

"Are you trying to tell me that she challenges a weather anomaly to a betting game?"

"That's right! You gotta understand, all of the traditional heroes of this planet bet against their enemies. Gambling is–"

"Important to their culture, yes, _I know, _would you just get _on _with it."

"So the girl challenged Eats Eyes to a wager, she said, 'Eats Eyes, I bet you that I can circle around this palace for one thousand and four years straight, without stopping_ once.'" _

"That's a stupid bet!"

"And Eats Eyes said, 'No you can't,' and she said, 'Yes I can' and he said, 'Fine, if you can do that then you can take the prince back to the planet with you.'"

"Who would make that kind of bet? That's an _awful _deal!"

"And so Eats Eyes said, 'Well, what are you waiting for?' and the girl said, 'Ah-ah-ahhhh, we didn't say when I had to _start.' _And, bein' a builder's daughter, she began to build."

"Build _what? _With what materials? You're in the middle of outer space! You rode here on an impossible hippotopian! How is she supposed to–"

"She _used"_ – Wander only briefly raises his voice – "She used the materials given to her by the wise stars she'd befriended, and the wealth of the empresses an' warriors an' scientists. And the treasure she took from the Sun's Labyrinth! And, to top it all off, the empty jewelry box, using the Tincter Tree bones to bless her construction with powerful magic."

"How did she get it all there? Is she underwater or not? Why did Eats Eyes let her do all this if he could just rip her apart? Why–"

"_Powerful magic," _Wander repeats. "And, after another year or two, she completed a beautiful palace of her own, more than half the size of the prison-palace."

"That is _not _a realistic construction timeline."

"The difference was that _her _palace was built with good intentions, so it could float in the High Sea instead of sitting on the bottom like dead weight, like the prison-palace did. She tied the two palaces together, using her fiancé's captivity as an anchor to keep her from floating away."

"She _tied _the _palaces _together."

"Yeah! Then her hippotopian friend gave her palace a little push, which set it moving in the water in a wide arc around the prison-palace." Wander draws himself up, tugging at his hat.

He gives his next words an awed cadence, obviously drawing the story to a close: "And so, to this day, the prison-palace moves in a steady path through the High Sea, circling the planet far below, disguised as what the people call the Prince Moon. And, running in small, bold circles around _that_ moon, you can see the little Builder Moon. That's the palace of the builder's daughter, cobbled together out of stardust and magic and good intentions. It circles the Prince Moon as she lives inside, dinin' and readin' and buildin' and bettin' with her loyal hippotopian friend. She waits for the day that she wins her wager with Eats Eyes and can be reunited with her loving fiancé."

He tilts his head, expression still alight with curious intensity, and leans towards the makeshift fire. "Some say that at certain points of the moons' cycle, when the lovers' windows are dead-even with one another, they can look through and gaze at each other's faces. They talk. Argue. Apologize. Tell stories. Pass notes through the bars. Reach out and try to take each other's hands. One day they'll be reunited again, and then they'll come back to the island of Madorex to take their rightful place as Queen and King."

A deep breath, bordering on a sigh, that finishes in a brief bout of coughing. "And – and that's how the story ends: the two of them circlin' each other. Waiting, for hundreds of years more."

The last words echo in the cave. Around them, nothing has changed: the wind moans as loudly as ever, and the fire stutters lower. It's dark. Getting cold enough for Hater to feel it, just a little bit.

Hater opens his mouth to reiterate what a stupid story that was, but he realizes something on his way there and instead winds up saying, "I've been to Madorex." It sounds stupid. Redundant and out of place.

"Have you?" Wander asks with interest. His voice sounds too raspy. "What a great coincidence!" The story's mania is still shining quietly in his eyes, like someone shaking off a dream. No matter what Hater thinks of the tale, there was obviously something enjoyable for Wander in its telling.

Calling it a "coincidence," in any case, is an understatement; this side of the galaxy is wide, and islands are small, and Hater is usually so bad with place names. "Impossibility" would be more like it. Or "predestination," if Hater believed in that kind of thing. But he doesn't have the energy to grapple with the question right now, so he lets the surreal truth of it wash over him: years apart, both he and Wander ran into the exact same tiny island in a wide, wide universe.

The way they always run into each other in a wide, wide universe.

This moment of realization _seems_ pathetically fragile, a soap bubble of inexplicable calm. But no matter how much Hater struggles against the stillness, he finds he cannot break it open.

"It was a long time ago," he relents. "They had the red waterfalls."

"_Beautiful_, aren't they?" Wander says, smiling far too lazily and companionably for Hater's comfort. "Have you heard this story before, then?"

"No," he says hotly, and he doesn't know why it feels like such a great admission. "I wasn't there to see the falls, or to hear the stories."

Wander's peaceful expression doesn't change, and Hater despises him for it. The words sound empty in the echo.


	3. Pigmia and the Planets

Subtle smoke rises from the fire, meandering along the cave ceiling until it finds the crevice entranceway. From there the strong winds suck it away to circle the planet's atmosphere, leaving their makeshift room free of haze.

"A fire extinguisher," Hater says doubtfully, watching Wander rifle through the impossible contents of his hat. "You're saying that means that _something_ in here will definitely go up in flames at some point."

"I dunno!" Wander chirps, pulling a small tangle of decorative silver chains free from his hat. "Huh! This isn't kindling, either."

"What else could an extinguisher mean?" Hater snaps.

"Could be anything, really," Wander says. He takes a rather wheezing breath, examining the newfound jewelry – it looks like a necklace, except there are too many loops and branching metal strands. "Now what is this little thing? It's so pretty, I know it looks familiar–"

"Nothing's on fire yet, but the hat gave you an extinguisher. If you're telling the truth about how it works, does that mean something will catch fire really _fast?" _

"I'm not following you," Wander says politely, holding the jewelry up to the light.

"You won't have time to pull anything out when it happens, so it gave you the extinguisher early."

"Mmmm," Wander says, turning the little treasure over. Tiny blue gems stud its surface. "I guess that could be it, but it doesn't sound much like how the hat operates….Oh!" Two of the branching chains have clasps; he attaches them to each other, and they form a circle large enough to fit around his wrist. "I remember this! I got it as a present from the First Cousin of Mellatonia!"

"Fascinating," Hater says dryly.

Wander pays him no mind, securing the jewelry onto his wrist. He moves the other branching chains towards his fingers, where he loops and ties and binds them in an intricate pattern crisscrossing his hand. It's obviously too big for him – the chains drip towards the ground, and the part secured around his smallest finger seems ready to slide off at a moment's notice. "It's been such a long time since I've thought about this ol' thing," he says admiringly, enchanted by the sight of his hand in the finery.

It takes a moment for Hater to realize he's staring as well. Something in the way the silver coats and drowns Wander's tiny hand (his slender wrist) draws his attention like a nexus of firelight. Flashing in the dimness, a pulsating contrast to Wander's normal attire.

"You know, funny enough, this reminds me of a moon story the Cousin told me," Wander says, a faraway smile crossing his features. Hater suddenly and intensely doesn't want to know any more about how Wander relates to this "Cousin."

"Ugh, you're gonna tell _another _story?"

"It's not very long!" He swishes his hand back and forth like a choral conductor, watching the interplay of lights on the chains' surface. Hater forces himself to look away.

"Let me guess: you don't remember the end of this one."

"Nope, this one I've got from start to finish! Sorta stuck in my memory." His smile is fond and reflective. Hater drags a skeletal finger along the ground, pushing hard enough to feel the sting of gravel through his glove.

"It's sort of a creation myth, 'cept it's all about different kinds of relationships and how they came to be."

"Oh. More sappy, plotless stuff. I'm overjoyed."

"That's the spirit! This one starts, as they say, in the time before the planets' paths were set in stone." He breaks off in a cough, holding his bejeweled hand up in a gesture for patience (as though Hater were eagerly awaiting his words)."Mm! Sorry about that. Anyway, long ago, the planets in Mellatonia's system didn't have a set path around their sun. This caused a lotta chaos, and you can imagine, because they all ended up runnin' around and collidin' with each other willy nilly, with no regard for anybody else's business but their own. Then one day–"

"Why do you keep doing that?"

Wander drops out of the story again (you can see it in the way the tight energy flows out from his shoulders – like losing the impulse for fight-or-flight). He blinks up at Hater innocently. "Doin' what?"

"You just – you keep _coughing, _don't think I haven't noticed!"

And as the words leave his mouth, Hater _does _notice. It's retroactive, thinking back to each pause in Wander's meandering tales. (He doesn't mention how long it took for him to realize.) "You thought you were being subtle, didn't you? This whole time, you've just been rasping and wheezing between each stupid tangent. What, are you trying to make me _feel _bad for wanting to choke you? Because that's not gonna happen! You brought that on yourself!"

"Uh…no, that's not–"

"Or are you trying to tell me it still hurts? You were _fine _while it was happening! There's no way it still hurts!"

"No, it doesn't have much to do with–"

"But that's when it started! You've been doing it from the moment I spared your pitiful life! Admit it, you're pretending to be weak so you can extract _mercy _from me! Mercy that_ I don't have!"_

Wander winces, and for a moment Hater thinks a confession is forthcoming. Then the Nomad reaches up and presses an orange finger to the side of his head. He twists it back and forth against his ear hole, like he's scrubbing out the volume of Hater's rant. "Yeesh! D'you have to be so loud? All I was gonna say was that…well, it was a little hard for my lungs to get caught up after that. That's all."

"It's hard for your – that doesn't make any sense!"

Then the realization hits him like a ton of Zbornak manure. The words escape before he can rein them in and turn them into a threat. Instead they hang neutrally, empty of intent:

"The air here isn't thick enough."

Wander gives him a little half-smile he hasn't seen before. Then he nods.

Once someone told Hater about micro black holes that pop up throughout the galaxy, appearing without warning to suck their surroundings into a tight, crushing point. They are inexplicable and untraceable, gone almost before they arrive. This, then, is the most logical explanation for the sudden pit that opens at his center (gone almost before it arrives).

Wander's hands sit clasped in his lap, one bejeweled and one plain. The banjo leans against the wall to his right, casting its own shadows. To his left: the fire extinguisher, like a con artist's attempt at premonition. These three elements are very clear to Hater's eye, stuck there in a single image like cave paintings brought to life.

"You seem fine." His voice comes out gruff, but not in the way he's used to.

"Oh, it's not gonna hurt me too bad. I'm made of hardy stuff." Wander smiles cheekily, and something strange winds its way around Hater's ribs. "It's just that I shouldn't be moving around too much or I can't catch my breath. And I'm kinda dizzy. Which is, ya know, another reason not to move."

Hater notices it now: the way Wander's chest moves in exaggerated motions. The almost imperceptible rasp after long sentences. It's not obvious if you've spent next to no time with members of his species and don't know what you're looking for. (This in itself is unacceptable. You should always know your enemies.)

"So you were just gonna hope I didn't realize that?" he snarls, and feels inept.

"Well, uh, you kinda didn't. Meaning no offense, of course."

Hater crosses his arms over his chest and, in a great act of willpower, resists the impulse to shout in favor of a more concrete plan of action. "You're telling me that if I decided to finish you off, right here and right now, you wouldn't even be able to run?"

And there it is again: that infuriating lack of concern for life and limb. Wander shrugs and meets his eyes when he speaks: "I s'pose not. But you're waiting for Sylvia with me, so that she can save us." He blinks twice, very slowly. Hater catches himself trying to decode it, like there's a chance of method within this madness.

There is a brief, taut stillness.

Then Wander leans back and says, "I s'pose there's nothin' for it but to continue our story."

"What?" Hater is not used to feeling so constantly adrift in a conversation. "Really? _That's _where you're going from here?"

"Why not?" Wander asks, reaching for his banjo.

"Because you just admitted a fatal weakness to me! Because we are _enemies, _and you shouldn't be this invested in telling your enemies bedtime stories! Because – because you can barely _breathe, _so you shouldn't be wasting breath spewing sappy nonsense at me!"

"_To_ you," Wander says, winding each silvery chain further around his hand so the jewelry doesn't interfere with his music. "I'm spewing sappy nonsense _to _you." Before Hater can give that phrasing the attention it merits, he adds: "'Sides, I already told you it's not as bad as all that. It's not like I can 'barely breathe.' I'm just comin' up a little short, is all. Don't worry about it."

Even those words, for reasons Hater can't get his head around, send a fizz of anxiety down his spine. "Still seems like a waste," he grumbles, eyes trailing the rise and fall of Wander's shoulders.

"Nah." He plucks experimentally at a string. "I'd rather be huffin' and puffin' with a story ringin' in this empty air than breathing full breaths in silence."

Hater doesn't know how to respond to that. He lets Wander speak instead.

"The planets," he says, strumming gently along, "kept runnin' into each other all willy-nilly. Big or small, gaseous or made of rock, they hurried along on their own paths without looking up to see who they were gonna collide with. All of them ended up with scars from those days: deep craters, canyons, huge chunks taken out, you've seen that kind of thing before." Wander nods courteously to Hater, who tries not to notice the unhealthy-sounding way he clears his throat.

"Finally, Pigmia – that's the name of their sun – decided that enough was enough. The tipping point was the catastrophic collision of Mellatonia and a smaller planet – the little one was smashed to smithereens, blowin' the dust all over the system where nobody could help but choke on it with every breath."

"Who's choking, the planets?" Hater asks skeptically.

"Yep!"

"They're all alive?"

"That's the way the story goes."

"So this 'dust' that they're all choking on: it's literally the decaying body of–"

"_So anyway, _Pigmia gets all up in arms and calls the planets to a meeting. Now, this was already a strange new act: the planets didn't revolve around her yet, so she didn't have any real authority over anybody."

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around how stupid the idea of a living planet is."

"I wouldn't dismiss 'em too quickly. They can have right short tempers."

"...What?"

"And I will caution you: never play 'em at cards. Their poker faces are _outstanding."_

"Are you trying to tell me that you've–"

"So Pigmia called this big meeting, and there was a bit of a hubbub when Uver, the largest gas planet in the system, challenged her for the right to run the meeting, but Pigmia is literally thirty times bigger than Uver, thank-you-very-much, so that kerfuffle was dealt with quickly and then everything proceeded politely.

"Pigmia laid down a series of carefully-planned rules that the planets could choose to follow. Anyone else, she said, had to either promise not to cause chaos in the system or leave. Naturally, not everybody agreed, and a bunch of the smaller planets were outraged that Pigmia's size gave her the ability to boss them around. But overall, everybody was so tired of the mess, and so upset about everybody pulverizin' each other, that most of 'em agreed it was for the best.

"First things first: Mellatonia had to make reparations for destroyin' Cortin, that little planet. So Pigmia gathered up all the dust in the system and molded it like putty in her hands–"

"Why does she have hands if–"

"–and so created a new body for the planet, made out of the pieces of zir old one. She then charged Mellatonia with protecting zir, giving zir to Mellatonia as a vassal. From that day on, Cortin circled around Mellatonia as its moon. And here's the really interestin' part: Mellatonian society takes its cues from this story. Or…maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, based on this decision, a powerful Mellatonian who has done great wrong to another must take that person under their wing, protecting and aiding them until they can recover and live their own life again."

"Okay. Nice moral. We're done?"

"Nope! All the other planets had to get assigned to a path, too."

"Ugh."

"Tannin, a good-size rock planet, was Pigmia's closest friend and advisor. So to this day he circles the closest to her light."

"Is this important?"

"Yeah! Because in Mellatonian society, there's a special word for a person, usually older and wiser, who gives you advice: they're your 'tannus,' and they can be courted and broken up with just like a romantic partner."

"I'm sorry I asked."

"Then there are the Twin Planets, whose orbits cross each other: sometimes Viti is closer to the sun, and sometimes it's Morti. This represents your Twin, which is different than how you or I might think of a 'twin.' You're not related by blood, but your lives are all bound up in each other from an early age. It's not romantic, mind you: in fact, it's considered taboo to fall in the wrong kind of love with your Twin."

"Why would you even have to _explain _that?"

"Well you have to keep in mind that some of these words are…rough translations. I talked to the Cousin for hours about it; their concept of family is just different from yours or mine! A Cousin, by the way, is what they call a leader on their planet. It's based on Uver's role: that large, bossy gas planet that's most similar to Pigmia in terms of what he's made of. He's 'related' to Pigmia, the giver of all life in the system, but he doesn't have all her power. He can only shepherd the other planets and try to keep them safe when Pigmia can't do it herself. So: Cousin!"

"Why would you name your ruler after something without any real power?"

"They're a humble folk."

"Really." Hater eyes Wander's jewelry.

Surprisingly, this seems to make Wander lose his footing, if only for a moment. His eyes rove around the cave and he toys with the chains, winding a finger through their complex loops. "Yeah, um…huh. What were those other planets again? Lemme see..." He coughs to himself, keeping the volume of it low. "Uh, there's Gangia, who has twelve tiny moons, all of which used to wander freely through the system as planets. Gangia is called the Grand Mother, and represents certain Mellatonians who care for runaways and orphans. It's considered a great honor."

"Riveting." Hater watches for more traces of that strange skittishness, but they've all been wiped clean.

"Then there's Mellatonia's other two moons: Evolun and Relat, who represent two kinds of romantic love: your soulmate and your…their word for it is 'relus,' and it means" – Wander's grin splits wide – "the person who's gonna have your babies."

Of course Wander is a baby person. Of course.

"And then you've got Strayus, the farthest planet. Ze represents the travelers whose calling it is to meet new people and see new things." He points to his own chest with a rather unsubtle eyebrow raise, then continues: "And finally we get to all the little planets that refused to bend to Pigmia's rules, or to leave the system. They make up the asteroids, and they're pretty careful not to draw the others' wrath by slamming into anybody. They made a promise, after all. It's just that sometimes they forget, and a planet gets slammed." Wander pauses contemplatively, looking up at the cave roof. "And…that's it! That's all the parts I know. There might be more, but the Cousin didn't tell 'em to me."

"This 'Cousin,'" Hater finds himself saying, watching Wander carefully untie the jewelry from his fingers. "Was he…I mean. Were you…"

He doesn't even know what he's trying to say. He regrets the attempt. Trails into embarrassed silence instead.

"We were close," Wander says fondly, depositing the jingling mess of strands into his hat. "Real close."

Then he takes a deep, strained breath and smiles up at Hater – and there's something curious in it. Expectant, even. The slightest bit bashful.

Hater is becoming accustomed to not knowing how to respond.


	4. The Bard's Bottles

I'd like to take a second to thank everyone who has read and reviewed this weird little story thus far. Your words of encouragement are very dear to me. :)

Special shout-out to dalek for responding to every chapter (you're a peach!), and to futureauthor13 for rockin' the dual-wield tumblr-ffnet combo.

This chapter was originally split into two parts, which is why there's a scene break without any actual time being lost. Sorry about that. It read weird otherwise.

Enjoy!

* * *

At first Hater doesn't notice the darkness creeping from the corners to slowly envelope them both.

It's a logical progression: the moon revolves around its planet, eventually hiding itself from the light of Artellus' sun. The wane illumination that before floated in from the crevice is now reduced to the pinpoints of stars. Hater doesn't feel the cold so much as a physical sensation (it would need to be much colder for that) as a clenching of the spaces between his bones.

Only the fire exists for warmth, but the kindling is dangerously scarce among the ashes.

Wander cannot seem to remedy the situation, no matter how many times he tries to pull sticks out of his hat. First he gets an empty bottle, which makes him smile before returning it. Then a silvery leaf attached to purple berries (this makes him blush violently as he shoves it back with a weak giggle). Then a jug of water. Then a bucket. Then a pillowcase filled with dirt.

"If I didn't know better…" he says to himself, glancing at the fire extinguisher. His words waver with the chattering of teeth.

"What?" Hater asks, wary (but definitely in an aggressive way).

"Those things'd all be great for puttin' out a fire," he says wonderingly.

Then he draws a shuddering breath that ends in a cough.

It takes Hater a second, then he springs to his feet, bashing his head against the slant of the ceiling where it meets the wall. "You _idiot!"_ he says, bringing his foot down on the flames.

"Hater!" Wander squeaks, like this sight is the thing choking him. "You're gonna hurt yourself!"

Hater only has to stomp five times before the struggling pit is reduced to embers (then another three times putting out the smoldering edge of his robe).

"How are you so _stupid!?" _he howls, and feels a pretty mixture of things he hasn't felt since before adolescence. Imperiled due to ignorance. The desire to extinguish something that causes pain.

"I don't know what–"

"_Fire burns oxygen!"_ he shouts into sudden silence, staring Wander down as if daring him to dispute this basic fact.

Wander doesn't. "Well…yeah," he says, craning his neck.

"So you're destroying your own air supply!" he says, praying that something comes by to smash Wander with a great big rock so he doesn't have to deal with this stupidity, this absolute inability to self-protect, this terrifying _vulnerability _in its most basic form.

"Hater," Wander says, raising an eyebrow. "It doesn't work like that."

"Don't try to tell me how fire works!"

"I don't mean that! It's just…we're getting new air from the surface all the time. Through that there great big hole! You can feel it sometimes when the wind picks up. I know it's a bit…rough" – his voice cracks slightly, as if to prove his point – "but the fire's so small it_ can't _eat up oxygen faster'n we do. Even here."

"But there's so little air to begin with!"

"Uh…yeah, but. Listen. Once Syl and I went to a massive underground bonfire to celebrate the first day of the festival of – well, you get the idea. The thing was huge an' the chimney was kinda small an' there were a lot of us down there. There was still oxygen as long as the fire wasn't deadly-hot and there were air holes." He pauses to consider. Regulates his breathing. "Though the smoke was somethin' else. They were a pretty resistant folk, come to think of it. Syl and I did have some trouble with that. In fact, we–"

"Shut up!" Hater is horrified all over again to feel green heat spreading across his cheeks. "Just…just shut up. You don't know anything."

"What's wrong?" Wander blinks up at him, the picture of innocence.

It's the humiliation that tries to kill him first. Then, once he can process the shape of that, it's the complete incomprehensibility of his own actions. Wander isn't the stupid one here. _He's_ not so stupid he doesn't know how fire works. So rocked by every untraceable impulse that he jumps and scrambles to fend off a danger that isn't even his.

And worst of all, Hater still feels the echo of Wander's alarm. Those big saucer eyes, liquid with sympathetic panic. _"You're gonna hurt yourself!"_ like it would matter.

"Nothing," he snaps, and sits heavily back down. "Tell a stupid story."

x

"So we're movin' on, I guess?" There's something graceful about the way Wander chooses to veer away from the topic of Hater's embarrassment so smoothly, but Hater isn't about to acknowledge that. "That bottle from the hat reminded me of somethin' from way, _way _back. I think you'd like to hear it."

Hater doesn't bother to object, instead shifting his weight to a slightly more comfortable position on the rocky ground.

It's even colder without the fire. He'd suggest starting it up again, but the hat seems obstinately anti-firewood, and Hater has no desire to bring the subject back up. (He can't help but notice the way that Wander pulls his knees up to his chest, like he's conserving body heat. Wonders if there's a blanket in that vindictive little headpiece.)

"This is a story," Wander begins grandly, "that my momma told me." He looks at Hater for a reaction. When he doesn't get one, he presses forward. "She was a travelin' woman, as (I'm sure you know) most of us are. She liked the bits around Alpha Centauri best – that's the name some nearby folk gave to this bright old star – and she kept tellin' me about all the wonderful things I could find out yonder. (I was born on one of our home planets for convenience's sake – but you don't want to hear all that.) I never did get out that way myself, because Nomads have a real strong distaste for a concept we like to call 'rote.' Meaning that it's always better to go somewhere new – break away from the travels of your parents, ya know? Doesn't mean I can't go visit sometime, but most of us'd rather make our own way around the galaxy. It's a big place." He pulls his hat off, then slips inside of it like a sleeping bag. The motion answers some of Hater's questions, but leads to a whole score of others. Wander looks like a bean: propped against the wall, the bend of his knees visible through the fabric. Hands tucked inside.

"Anyway, she used to tell me this story while we went walkin' around the rain-gardens. She liked to go at dusk, when the colors set off the sky real pretty and you could start to see the stars – she figured them like destinations, I think, that were still half-hidden from her. So the way twilight brought them slowly to light probably felt just right." His face goes soft around the edges, eyes drifting closed in memory. Carelessly serene, like Hater has no power to hurt him. "She loved lookin' up at 'em. I knew real early on that she wasn't gonna stay on-planet for longer than she had to."

Hater catches himself considering, for a distracting moment, how long Nomad parents stay with their young.

"She told me a lotta stories, and this one wasn't even my favorite. But it's a good one, and it has to do with moons, so I figure we might as well." He grins. Opens his eyes. "It's the story of a powerful bard – well, I guess I should explain that 'bards' in Nomad fairytales are what other people might call wizards, or the like. So this powerful bard went travelin,' talkin' to people and playin' songs and sellin' his services, when he came across a beautiful, _beautiful, _absolutely-stunning-and-I-mean-_gorgeous _moon."

"Unless the moon is made of solid gold," Hater finds himself saying, "I don't see what could be so great about it."

Wander brightens. His eyes vibrate with some of that storyteller's energy, and he gives a little wiggle-hop in his hat. "Aw, I'm glad you're chimin' in again!" When Hater looks at him blankly, he adds, "I mean, you were gettin' awful quiet. I thought maybe you were tired."

"You _want _me to interrupt you?"

"Well, sure! Storytellin' is a group effort, after all!"

"_No, _it's – it's the opposite of that! You're supposed to_ command _an audience!"

Wander tilts his head way to the side; it's a wonder he doesn't lose balance with no hands free to support himself. "If I tried to _command_ you, wouldja listen to me?"

"Of course not!"

"So what's the problem?"

"Ugh, just get _on _with it. You want me to be a bad audience, _fine."_

Wander laughs at him, which he hates. (It's gentle, which he hates more.) "You're a contradiction," he says, and goes on before Hater can argue. "The reason this moon was so great was that it could appear as any kind of life form it wanted to! So what the bard found there was a beautiful Nomad girl, floatin' around her planet like she was movin' through a swimming pool.

"Now, this bard was powerful as anything, but his family didn't teach him too many manners. He was so besotted with the girl that, once he had courted her and won her affections, he demanded that she come away and travel with him at once."

"What's so bad about that?"

Wander blinks at him. "What's _not _bad about it?"

"Isn't traveling what you all _do?"_

"Well yeah, but you can't just _order _somebody to come with you! It doesn't work like that. And it's not right to let somebody with a settled life come along."

"She was just floating through space!"

"In an _orbit. _She had the tides to command, and people who relied on her light in the darkness." Wander yawns, then coughs dryly (Hater's fingers dig into his gloved palms at the sound). "And ya know, among the older generations it's…you're not supposed to ask anybody to come with you at _all. _They have to ask _you._ Otherwise you might be tempting somebody into uprooting from somethin' they're gonna regret leaving behind."

"I didn't think there'd be _rules." _

Wander shrugs benignly. "Some stuff comes down through tradition. It's meant to do good."

Maybe Hater needs to rethink his definition of Wander as an anarchist by nature – old social codes exist for everyone, sometimes in the most unexpected places. He wonders if Wander's travel partner had asked to come along, or if he had broken tradition for her.

When he looks up, he's being watched in the most curious way. Wander breaks eye contact as soon as it's noticed.

"So our bard worked himself into a huff that the moon didn't wanna come with him. And, being as learned in magic as he was, he cast a spell on the beautiful old bottle he used to carry his powders. He emptied it out first, of course, which left a beautiful trail of dust in the sky – something you can see from two of the Nomad planets to this day – and used it to capture the moon, shrinking her down and trapping her inside."

"How many of you _are _there, that you have so many planets?"

Wander laughs. "You sound angry! We're pretty few and far-between, all things considered. Our planets' populations aren't thick, and they serve more as home bases than anything."

Hater knows he should be filing this information away to use against Wander in the future, but there is something genuinely interesting in hearing about such a mysterious species. Wander doesn't seem afraid to tell him, either. He feels the same indeterminable sensation that had crept up on him when the Nomad closed his eyes to speak of his mother.

"So the bard took the moon away with him by force. He didn't think of himself as being cruel. In fact, he talked with her all the time, letting her out to take on any form she wanted while they travelled through the dark recesses of open space. She was spittin' mad, of course, but she didn't let on. Wouldn't do her any good now that she was so far from home, an' talkin' to the bard was all the freedom she got."

"He'd have to be stupid not to realize."

"That she was angry?"

"When you take people prisoner they're not supposed to _like _you. That's not how it works."

Wander gives him a long, appraising look. Hater flushes. "I mean that's – that's not how it's _supposed _to work! You're an exception." Instead of coming out accusatory, it sounds like he's trying to keep Wander's favor, which is not what he was aiming for at all.

Wander graces him with another soft smile _(stop that) _and continues: "So the moon came with him on all these great and exciting adventures, but even while she enjoyed the sights, she wanted to go home. Sooner or later she realized that the bard was takin' her out of the bottle less and less. He was fickle and bored, which took away some of the precious little freedom she had. An' then one day the bard saw _another _beautiful moon. Decided then and there that he _had _to have him."

"Are magical transforming moons even _real?"_

"Sure they are!"

"You're lying. Like you were lying about the living planets. Name _one_ living planet you've met."

"The bard fell in love with the new moon (haha, _new moon_, get it?) and began to court 'im. And pretty soon the same thing happened: he asked him to come along and was turned down, so he took 'im away by force in another bottle. The first moon figured that maybe now she could convince the bard to let her go, since he had so obviously lost interest in her, but no dice: the bard wanted the both of them for himself. So the two moons carried on like this, only allowed to talk to each other when the bard willed it and let them out for a stretch.

And, you might not be surprised to know, this _kept happening. _Every time the bard would meet a moon, he'd fall head-over-heels in love and take it away. Some say he filled his whole hat with moons!" Wander's expression implies that this is quite a feat. "An' these moons kept on gettin' angrier and angrier, until they had had enough. The first moon was the one who planned it: she used her precious time free of the bottle to convince the bard that it had been _ages _since she'd had a good conversation with the second moon, and she would just love the bard _so much _if he let 'em both out at the same time. Then the second moon plead to speak with the third moon, and on and on just like that. They told 'im it was the perfect night for a party, where they would all come together and sing odes to the bard about how much he meant to them. And the bard (who was really still a little bit in love with each and every one of them) agreed."

"Is the moral of this story to avoid the unholy stupidity of falling in love?"

"Not at all!" Wander says, a bit too quickly. "We'll get to the moral. It's um. It's a bit more specific to Nomads than all that." He glances at Hater almost skittishly, eyes flickering towards and away, and Hater searches for a motive.

A warning has been forming, hovering in front of his skull where his planet's folklore insists the sixth sense is housed. It dangles intangible before his eyes in the darkening cave, made of seemingly random, incoherent pieces of unease. It murmurs, low: There is probably a reason the hat wanted the fire put out, but you don't know what it is yet. You do not like seeing someone else's jewelry on Wander's hand. You are losing control of your limbs. Wander needs to keep his body temperature up. Wander needs to breathe easy. Wander needs to be watched. His stories need to be heard and taken apart piece by piece. You are being pulled into something you don't understand and you need to reel back.

(The most dangerous is always the "why.")

"Now the moons came out in their Nomad forms, so the bard didn't suspect their plan. They still had the power of their enormous gravity locked up in their tiny transformed bodies, and when they were all released (some hundred of them in most versions), they suddenly reverted into their stunning natural forms: giant hunks of rock or dirt or water or crystal! Then they could pull the bard any which way they wanted to go as long as they kept up a good speed of revolution to drag him along in frantic, distracting circles. They were all lost in deep space, of course, 'cause the bard only let them out when there were no planets around. But the largest of them (the third or fourth moon, I don't rightly remember) was big enough to migrate to the middle of everybody's orbits, takin' on the form of a planet zirself."

The wind outside presses loudly against the rocks, more insistent than it has ever been. Something rattles above the ceiling, like the gusts are strong enough to pick up small stones. Wander snuggles further down into his hat, gaze drifting towards the dead pile of ashes between them. "It was too late for them to go back to their homes. Too far away. And the people on their planets had moved on without 'em, getting used to new tide patterns and the darkness of night. They were stuck out there. So they did the only thing they could think of: wandered as a system all their own. One small planet and a hundred moons, searching for a sun."

"And the bard?" Hater asks.

"Well, there's a couple versions of the ending. The one my momma told me is nicer – or at least more bittersweet. The moons find a sun that adopts them into its system. The new planet grows native creatures that evolve under their hundred-fold light, and the bard learns his lesson about stickin' people in bottles. To make up for it, he comes back every few cycles to bring the new species gifts that help them thrive. First he brings fire. Then a telescope so they can see their moon-creators."

The form of the story is starting to sound familiar and therefore boring. An ending was promised that more matches his interests, so he asks, "What's the not-nice version?"

Wander breathes deeply – halfway between a rasp and a sigh. A smile plays on the line of his mouth like he is speaking of something pleasant, but his eyes stay fixed on the bones of the fire. "The moons wander forever in the blackness, too far from life and too slow to find it. They have each other for company, which is nice enough, but they can never take care of anybody the way they did back home. The bard is…trapped. They keep 'im in orbit around the new planet with them, floating through space. They talk to 'im, sure, but not all their conversations are friendly. They figure they're treating 'im the same way they were treated, except almost the opposite: moons crave a stable orbit. Nomads crave a way to leave."

And that's the most interesting part, in its way: like a hell mythology based on empty space and stagnation. Rote.

"Do you tell this story to scare children into behaving?"

Wander grins up at him like he's said something funny. "The moral goes," he says, "'Don't take with you what wants to be left behind.' It's tempting, but it's cruel. You can't keep everything you find, or every_one, _and you have to let 'most everything go whenever you move forward."

Hater frowns. "I thought you were all about peace and love. I mean. All that crap."

"Sure we are! But there's a difference between lovin' people and bein' selfish. Those moons can never go back to their old lives. Not everybody's meant to keep on runnin' until their lungs give out."

"That's…" He doesn't know what he's trying to say, but he feels unsettled. The wind is getting louder, rocks rolling invisibly above their heads. He thinks he can make out Wander shivering in his hat. "I didn't think that would be the moral."

Wander shrugs. His expression is impossible to interpret – sleepy and tranquil (maybe too sleepy; what must it be like to breathe thin air?), but with that tentative something still flickering behind his eyes. "I guess some people think it's grim. Sylvia told me as much. Scolded me, actually," he says with a fond smile, "Said she would never leave me behind, or let me do the same to her. It's like I was tellin' her she wasn't supposed to matter to me, which is the _opposite _of the truth. All Nomads get to keep people sometimes, when they're right for each other and nothing holds them back. Then those companions – those_ constants_ – become the most important people in the whole wide universe."

Hater can't tell if Wander is claiming impudently high universal importance for himself, or if he just loves Sylvia that much.

Sickening displays of affection aside, "grim" is the descriptor he would use, too. He resents it, but the story makes him feel melancholy. Probably because as a galactic dictator he believes firmly in the right to order people to come along with him, even when they don't want to stick around.

Probably that.

Wander seems to be struggling to put something into words, testing each phrase before sending it out. "It's just…you've gotta be real careful. You've gotta understand that in some ways Nomads are different than most other folks. Uprooting somebody isn't right." He looks at Hater closely, speaking now with a sort of hushed, rich tension: "It's easier sometimes to find somebody who's already uprooted, another wanderer or traveler or…or bard. Go from there."

And there it is again: that sense of expectation, too big for this makeshift room. It's cosmic, drawn out and terrifying. Then, just as Hater starts to flounder for a proper response, the moment is gone. Wander smiles.

Hater wishes he wouldn't look at him like they share a secret. Soft and light.

Wander starts laughing at nothing. "Hoo boy," he says, prying a hand free from his hat to scratch at his cheek.

"What?" Hater asks.

"Nothing. It's nothin'. I just didn't expect this'd be so – let's just say I'm runnin' out of ideas here."

Hater tries to demand an explanation, but he's cut off by the rising sound of wind-blasted rocks bouncing and scraping over their crude roof. Thin, frantic air.

"Hold on," Wander frowns. Reaches down into the hat that he's snuggled up inside. Awkwardly draws his arm out again, pulling an object free of the cloth by moving it close against his chest. "Er," he says, eyes wide. "That's new."

"Why? What does that mean? What's happening?"

"The hat doesn't usually…this is a weird present."

In his hand, reflecting wane starlight through the gloom, is a thin knife.


	5. The Insect

STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENS LOOK OUT. I really enjoyed writing this part, probably because it's a different pace from the rest. I'm hurrying since I'm about to go home for break, so I'll probably get there and find a bunch of phrasing I want to edit later, d'oh.

Warning for entomophobia and heavy talk of violence.

* * *

The explanation is simple. Hater thinks: of course.

The knife's edge is cruelly serrated, perfectly-spaced steel teeth smirking up at him in the dark.

"Hater," Wander says, unsure.

"Your hat wants me dead," he replies, dry as he can make it.

The wind shrieks above them, whipped into frenzy. Wander looks at him like he's said that gravity is a lie.

"What? No, that doesn't make any sense!"

"Doesn't it?" he snarls. Stands up slowly, stretching the instant out over the both of them. "We're stuck here alone together, so it gives you a knife. It waits until you've lured me into a false sense of security with your inane rambling stories, then urges you to strike when the time is right. Well done," he says with a sarcastic nod to the headpiece, still bizarrely encasing Wander's body. "A great tactical decision, for a hat."

"Hater, you know that's not true."

"I should have suspected," he says, pacing now – or as close as he can come in their prison of a room. "After it _humiliated _me with its tricks – with the fire, and the bracelet. It hates me. It wants me gone."

"The bracelet – what are you talking about?"

"The bracelet! Your bracelet!" Hater snaps. He feels his temper rapidly phasing out of his control, but can do nothing to stop it. He will end up trapped in his own juggernaut of a rampage, like so many times before. "The ugly bracelet your stupid _Cousin _gave you. 'Modest?' Ha! How unsubtle can you _be?" _

"Hater, you're not making sense–"

"That hat kept trying to make me _upset_. Keeping me in the dark and the cold, trying to torture me before I die!"

"Nobody's gonna die!"

"And how would you know that?" he spits, whirling on Wander like he can drag the answer out of him.

"Because," Wander says, as though it's the most self-evident thing in the universe, "I would never do that to you. I can't even use this!" He thrusts the knife towards Hater, handle forward. "The hat has never, ever given me a weapon before. Ever."

"Well something's obviously changed!"

"_No," _Wander says, and Hater watches his face carefully: his eyes, wide and innocent. The trembling set of his lips. He climbs out of the offending article of clothing, placing it firmly and protectively on his head. "I'm tellin' you: I _don't use weapons, _and the hat knows it."

"Then how do you explain _that?_" he demands, near shouting now. The knife's handle is black and highly-polished, glittering like a beetle. It looks all wrong in Wander's small fingers. Hater feels prickles of green power running down the bones of his arms and pooling beneath the calcium of his fingers. Waiting.

"I don't _know!" _Wander says, true distress in his voice now. "It doesn't make any sense! The hat does what's _good _for people!"

"Oh, and you don't think that getting rid of a merciless galactic _dictator _would count as good for somebody?"

"The hat gives me what I _need,"_ he says, like it counts as a clarification. "And I don't need to hurt you!"

"Why not?" Hater barks, drawing himself up to his full height and glaring imperiously down. "I'm your enemy, remember? You don't think that's _changed, _do you?" He feels his hands crushing in against themselves, fists balled up tight and bones grinding in their sockets.

He tries to will away the bitter taste in his mouth.

And Wander looks up at him. He does not posture or try to make himself look big. He simply stands there, tennis shoes against the cold ground, and stares like he has an urgent message to convey.

"Hater," he says. Simple. Complete in and of itself. It's quiet, but still audible over the now-screaming wind, the sound of rocks crashing above them. Like he's said it a million times before and will say it a million times again. "I don't need to hurt you."

The black hole is back, sucking at Hater's center. It's like dropping into the void, which feels like freefall (which feels like flying).

"Do you believe me?" Wander asks. "That I don't want to hurt you?" Sincerity glowing through every inch of his features, half-hidden by the dark.

Hater's jaw stops working. There's something caught in his throat.

When he regains control, the only words he can form are: "You couldn't, anyway. I don't even have skin to pierce." He makes a sound that some might call a laugh, more wild than he wants it to be. "It was a failed plan from the start, but good luck trying."

"Then that's your proof! The hat–"

"Give me the knife," he says. Wander doesn't even hesitate. Just offers the evil thing up.

And that, somehow, is the final straw.

"_No!"_ he shrieks. Wander jumps a foot in the air. "No! This is all _wrong! _You're supposed to _fight _me when I try to disarm you, not hand me a weapon! You're supposed to _defend yourself _when trapped alone in a cave with a mortal enemy, not tell him stories and talk about your childhood!"

"Hater, you're not my–"

"Yes, I _am! _At least I _should _be! I shouldn't be sitting here listening to you talk and play bad music and wear bad bracelets, I should be finishing you off! I shouldn't even be here. I shouldn't be doing this. I can't–" The last word makes him lose his footing, just for a moment. "Shouldn't" and "can't" are not the same thing, and he doesn't know how the sentence is supposed to end.

"Can't what?" Wander asks him, because Wander can't leave well enough alone. He's pulled the knife back again, more likely to hurt himself than anyone else with the way he's holding it. His expression is almost forcibly calm – like trying to pacify a frightened creature.

"Can't _deal _with this!" he howls. "Can't watch you wheeze and freeze and stick yourself with the pointy end because you're stupid enough to _trust _me! I can't have you trusting me! I can't do this! I can't–"

Something slams against the ceiling.

They freeze, staring at the small empty space above their heads. The skittering stone-sounds are back, but there's something off about the noise that Hater can't put his finger on.

"That's a weird weather pattern," Wander says. His tone is light but strained.

"What is?" Hater asks. It's more comfortable looking at the ceiling than it is looking down at his companion.

"Like a little cyclone, going 'round right over our heads," Wander muses.

It takes Hater a moment to figure out what he means. The stone-sounds do not move in one direction like they're being pushed by the wind. They seem to circle, or cross paths, or come at their little ceiling from four directions at once. They are also surreally regular – not once is there a pause in their march, even when the gusts die down.

"That's not normal," he says, just as he sees the feelers reaching in through the entranceway.

There are four of them. They are black, shining like beetles. Slender and flexible, they move through the front of the cave like water snakes.

Wander's immediate reaction, the cosmos knows why, is to step forward. His mouth absently peeking open, knife held loose at his side. Fascination overriding self-preservation. Hater shoves him backwards with a hand over his face.

The feelers whip through empty space, unable to reach the two of them, though they hover disturbingly over the remains of the fire, tasting its traces on the air (and that explains some things: if smoke can draw this kind of creature, no wonder the hat wanted it put out). They come close to touching Wander's banjo, sitting peaceably against the wall, but fall short. Then they writhe as they withdraw, flailing through the air in one last attempt to catch something unawares.

When they have fully pulled out of the cave, the body follows: legs, too many of them, too _big, _carrying a gigantic black creature over the slim entrance crack on its gentle decline. The sound above them intensifies: not rolling rocks, but undulating insectoid legs.

Hater wonders: which is more ominous, the thought that the confusion of sounds was the result of multiple centipede creatures moving over them, increasing by the hour, or the possibility that it was only one, circling above their heads?

The bug moves past the entrance, legs and legs and legs. Crawling over it like just another stepping stone off the little hill. Moving away.

Wander scrapes his foot against the ground. Hater shoots him a warning look, but it's useless with the creature's body blocking out the starlight.

The insect does not pause. Its heavy steps send bits of loose earth falling into their cave, but it does not acknowledge them. Finally the body ends; the clattering noises grow further away until they are swallowed by the sound of the wind. Hater moves to look out the entrance. Sees the shape of the thing marching onwards into the dust.

His hands are glowing green. It happened without a second thought. But Wander is staring towards the crack, not exactly afraid, and it's obvious from his grip that he couldn't use that knife to save his life (and isn't that the problem?).

The cave is silent now, except for the dull roar of the wind. Hater feels red sand blowing in against his face before he turns away.

"The hat," he says finally, very quietly, "made a big mistake giving you that. No matter what it wanted you to use it for."

Wander looks down at the weapon like he had forgotten it was there. Something like disgust passes over his features, and he tosses the knife towards the back of the cave like it's nothing. The clanging noise it makes is mundane and unringing.

"Sit down," he says. Smiles at Hater like nothing's happened. "Power down the glowstick hands and sit down for a spell."

If Hater wanted to, he could object. Suddenly getting off this rock is a lot more urgent, and anyway, a moment ago he was shouting.

Wander takes his own advice and sits down. Takes off the hat and snuggles inside. "We've already talked about everything under the suns, so maybe we could just rest awhile, you know? That sounds nice."

It's a lifeline. It's so clearly, obviously a lifeline that Wander has thrown him so he doesn't have to talk about the panic overwhelming him before. Hater should be offended by the sheer condescension inherent in that action.

Instead he powers down the glowstick hands. Finds his old spot and sits down.

Wander reaches his arms out of the hat to grab his banjo. When he plays, it's very quiet. Possibly even this is a risk, but Hater will take it over his own uncontrollable shouting.

He leans his head back against the rock and closes his eyes. Lets himself stop thinking, just for a moment.

The music isn't even half-bad.


	6. The Warming Tide

Hater doesn't know how long they sit together in silence. It's disturbingly pleasant – Wander abandons his banjo eventually, choosing instead to gaze into what would have been the fire. The cold, at least as far as Hater can tell, isn't overwhelming him; the hat seems fairly well-insulated. It would have to be, given the amount of exploring Wander does in who-knows-what conditions. Still, it's something to keep an eye on.

How long would it have taken Peepers to conquer the underground capital of Artellus? An hour or two at most, surely. The planet's population does not seem particularly advanced militarily, and Hater usually has the upper hand in terms of both tactics and morale. Even with the darkness to contend with, he can't imagine his troops faltering for long. The thought brings him no small amount of pride. Now all that's left is to wait for someone to take _him._

(Not, the cosmos willing, any form of murder-bug.)

When he has finished watching the backs of what pass for his eyelids, he spends some time watching Wander. This teaches him nothing new – Wander looks peaceably tired, like the day has been long but ultimately unthreatening. Occasionally his eyes drift closed. Then with a gentle start he wakes again.

Perhaps this is not ideal. Hater has no desire to be proven ignorant of Nomad oxygen needs for the second time, but he also thinks it would be counterproductive to let Wander slide into some sort of suffocation coma. (That happens, doesn't it? That probably happens.) He feels a pang of confusion – adrift again, what is he supposed to _do? _

Better to speak before these thoughts drive him into an anxious feedback loop; he knows his own patterns and the ways they can undo him if he's not careful. For a long moment he deliberates (not frets) over what to say, then settles on:

"What's taking her so long?"

Wander blinks at him sleepily. "Mmm?"

"Sylv – your Zbornak crony."

"Dunno. She's gotta figure out where we went first. I mean, _I _didn't expect a launch to the moon."

"So much for survival skills," Hater grumbles.

"Commander Peepers is pretty good at his job! Maybe he'll find us first."

Hater snorts. The idea isn't impossible – in fact, now that the window of Sylvia's usual speedy recoveries has long passed, it seems almost likely. But it's good to maintain some emotional distance from your underlings. Just because he's proud of Peepers' hypothetical accomplishments on Artellus doesn't mean he has to admit it.

"Then I suppose you'll take me captive again," Wander adds thoughtfully.

Hater starts. Wander, of course, doesn't fail to notice. "What is it? You don't look so good, are you okay?"

"Fine," he snaps, looking fixedly at his own feet. "I just…forgot something. You'd just better pray that she beats him here, or I _will _have to, um. Do that. Take you captive."

"What didja forget?"

"It's not important."

"Are ya sure? You looked kinda spooked."

"Look, I don't know if you're aware of this, but if I get my way you leave this moon in chains. So stop bothering me, alright?"

There is an image, hung up in the back of his head, that had until this moment escaped his conscious awareness: the two of them leaving this accursed rock, stars before them, sand below. Rising up into the atmosphere. Shoulder to shoulder, neither of them leading or falling behind.

He's forgotten a lot of things that are dangerous to forget.

"In chains," he says, fighting off another bitter taste floating in the space over his tongue. "Remember that."

"Sure thing," Wander says. Light and easy, and on anyone else it would sound mocking. On Wander it just sounds…warm. As the chill plays in the cracks between his bones, warm.

A lot has happened in the last few hours – how much will they need to talk about? How much can they forget?

He lets out a frustrated sigh, then moves on before Wander can interrogate him about it. "Don't you have a story to be telling? Or something?"

Wander cocks his head to the side. "I figured maybe you were gettin' sick of 'em."

"They're better than nothing," he says. Then: "It's not – they're not so bad."

Wander grins at him mischievously. If Hater had a heart it would be compressing uncomfortably. "W-what?"

"Nothing!" the Nomad says, smile turning graceful. "I just thought maybe you'd like a turn."

"What, telling fairy tales?"

"Yeah!"

"What gave you _that _idea?"

"I dunno, it just seems like I've been monopolizin' the conversation! I mean, you said you didn't know any from memory, but I bet you could give me the gist of one."

"I don't think there's anything in the nine galaxies that could compel me to tell you a fairy tale."

"Aw, come on! I wanna hear! I don't know any from your culture yet."

"I said _no."_

"It might be fu-un! Hey, I'll even do things the way you wanna do them – no interruptions, no nothing. You can _command _your audience." He frees his hand from the hat long enough to pull off a sharp salute. Hater feels his face warming up.

"No! It's…it's not that! I just don't _know _any."

"Huh...alrighty then, what's the story behind the thing you just said?"

"What?"

"You said 'in the nine galaxies.' Why are there only nine? Is that a thing for you guys?"

"No, it's – it's just an expression."

"Pretty specific expression."

"Because it comes from ancient times. Old, dead times when people believed stupid things."

He realizes he's made a mistake when Wander's features takes a sharp turn towards the curious – like a hunting dog that's caught a scent. "Really? What kinda stuff did they believe?"

"It's nothing important, it's just…old gods and – look, why do you care?"

Wander looks at him like he's asked the most self-explanatory question in the universe. "Because it sounds to me like you know the story," he says, expression sly.

"It's not a real story, just a myth!" He realizes how useless the words are even as he says them. "I mean, a set of...magical beliefs that…alright, _fine, _it's a story, are you satisfied? With the fact that it's a story?"

Wander hops in place like a jumping bean, hat rustling against the stones. "Ah-_ha! _I knew it! Come on then, let's hear it!"

"Oh, no. I said _no _stories."

"But you just told me that mine aren't so bad! So it's your turn! Don'tcha wanna make me listen to _you _for awhile?"

"_Wan_-der!" he says, and stops short. His voice sounds wrong.

Wander is still grinning up at him – no change there. The difference he feels rests on his own face. The way he is holding his jaw is determinedly unusual – loose, like he's alone in his quarters with nothing but a good TV show to keep him company. Like he's eating his favorite breakfast foods or setting a high score on his favorite game. Like he's just pulled off a major conquest and is celebrating in the comfort of seclusion.

But he's not alone. His mouth is curving up, edging into a smile, and he hadn't even realized.

His voice isn't wrong. It's relaxed.

When did this happen, when did it _start?_

"You can't tell me this isn't fun," Wander says. Pitched low and unobtrusive, like he's been politely reading Hater's mind.

"It's…we're not…" He trails off helplessly, searching Wander's face for…something. Where to go from here.

"What _aren't _we?" Wander asks him, a laugh in his voice. It sounds like a dare. A free-floating thought and an open door.

The sense of expectation is back – Hater treads carefully, electricity prickling up his spine. "Are we…a lot of things?" he tries, fumbling the words on his tongue.

"We're everythin' in the world," Wander says dreamily. He rests his chin on his hand and scrunches his knees up to his chest.

"You're just talking nonsense now," Hater says, a little desperately. "Those words don't make sense. They don't mean anything."

Wander shrugs. He doesn't break eye contact anymore. Hater doesn't want him to.

(He thinks he's smiling again, but it's suddenly so difficult to think about his own face.)

"Now we're gettin' somewhere," Wander says. Then he adds: "The thing about words is, they only mean what people want 'em to mean."

"I don't know what you're saying." His mouth is dry.

"I'm saying," Wander says – it's slow, too slow, ramping something up too high, an expectation sure to crumble – "that you should tell me a story."


	7. The Nine Galaxies

There are probably about two chapters left to go after this one!

* * *

Hater clears his throat.

He has done this four or five times now. Each time he hopes that it will give him the magical ability to open his mouth and let a cohesive narrative come spilling out, but that doesn't seem to be happening. He doesn't remember who told him about the nine galaxies, much less what he was told. There's no place to begin.

And really, he still can't believe this is happening. It's easier if he doesn't think about it too hard, but then what is there to think about? (Nothing but Wander, comfortably seated across from him, excitement lacing his features and the tilt of his chin.)

"I changed my mind," he says. "I don't know it."

"Aw, don't back out now! You must know _some _of it, otherwise you wouldn't remember the bit about the old gods."

"But that's – that's literally all I know! There were some gods, and they lived on the moon–" He trips on the last word, surprise dulling his tongue.

"Hater," Wander says, grin slow and sure, "Are you tellin' me we've got another moon story on our hands?"

"I…" He stops to think about it; connects the pieces as best as he can. "Yes. There's a moon involved."

"What're the odds of _that?"_ Wander says with unrivaled glee. Hater thinks: the same odds as us being _here, _and every unlikely place we've met in between. Like orbital gravity.

"This isn't natural," he says, more to himself than anything else.

"Sure it is," Wander replies, like he's following Hater's disjointed train of thought. "Sometimes the universe decides to give us a push."

Hater looks up at him sharply, expecting to find another inscrutable expression on Wander's face. Instead he finds simple, unabashed interest – in his story, yes, but also in _him. _Hater's finger traces nervous circles in the dust.

Maybe Wander hasn't ever been inscrutable. Maybe all it took was a slight readjustment in what Hater tried to see.

"Let's start from the moon," Wander says in a professional tone, "and take it from there. Why do the gods live on the moon?"

"They just do!" Hater says, trying to muster a better display of indignation past the warming of his cheeks. "It's just…that's where they are. The moon promised them a place to stay." He feels silly. No one believes this anymore.

"So…would you say that this was a _living _moon? Liiiiike, say, a living _planet?"_

He glares at Wander (this is easier). "Give it up. _Living planets aren't real. _It's just a kids' story."

"Sure, Hater."

"And didn't you say you weren't going to interrupt me?!"

Wander reaches his hand out of the hat to mime zipping his mouth shut. Hater watches imperiously to make sure he throws away the imaginary key.

"_Good. _Now we'll start with the moon." He casts around for something definitive-sounding to begin with, feeling incredibly foolish. "The gods lived on the moon, and they were always at war."

"Mmm-_mmm?"_ Wander watches him with wide eyes, lips sealed.

"Is that supposed to be a question?"

He nods fervently.

"Ugh. Fine. Ask."

"With _who?"_

"Each other," he says before he's given it any thought. He doesn't remember if this is true, but it sounds right. Fitted to his voice. "They were stuck in a constant civil war. Everybody always changed sides but they never really stopped."

Wander nods like this makes perfect sense. Maybe it does to someone who's used to seeing the galaxy on a large scale. (Everyone changes sides; nothing in the universe ever really stops.)

"They, uh. They kept fighting on the moon. Exchanging territory in battle but never winning." He pauses and eyes Wander, who gives him a reassuring nod. "So they…I think they created all the craters with explosions and war magic." This detail also comes naturally. He doesn't remember hearing it told that way so much as he understands that, were this story the truth, that's how it would _be._

"So the gods kept fighting and fighting." He feels himself stalling into repetition, running out of things to say. "But they realized they would never get anywhere. Even though they had to keep fighting anyway, because surrender is never an option."

Wander's brow furrows in puzzlement, but he keeps to his agreed silence. Hater is glad; knowing Wander's worldview, they would waste a lot of time debating the merits of peace accords.

He strains to think of what happens next. He remembers plot points so blurry they're more of a mood than a logical sequence of events, and he almost admits defeat before the inherent irony of what he's just said catches up with him and he decides to just try harder.

Wander looks so curious, after all. Invested in every word that comes out of Hater's mouth. Even as a ruthless galactic overlord, he isn't sure how to deal with the attention. (All he knows, in a heady rush of comprehension, is that he wants it to keep happening.)

"So the gods…no, one god. It was probably either the god of tactics or the god of simplicity, I don't remember. He decided that the best way to win would be to play on a different field. I think. So he created this puny second moon that could fit in the palm of his hand, and sent down a bunch of puny soldiers to take hold of it. Wait, no, that doesn't make sense. He must have sent down puny versions of the gods. Or…only the gods that were on his side, maybe. Wait, how does this make any sense at all? How would conquering a tiny moon let you conquer the normal moon?"

Wander shrugs at him pleasantly. He doesn't seem perturbed by the lack of realism in the story. In fact, he seems intrigued by Hater's attempts to wrangle his misshapen memories. Hater remembers what Wander said at the beginning of their misadventure, about changing the parts of stories that you don't remember or don't like. Maybe, he figures, the pieces he has will be enough to get this over with.

(The problem is that this is nice. It's so nice, and Wander keeps looking at him like he's brilliant just for speaking.)

"Uh. So. The gods on the other side figured out what was going on and created tiny versions of themselves, too. So now there was a whole other moon where the war was happening, just on a tiny scale. There's this bright star that you can see from my – from the planet, it's just…sort of over the shoulder of the moon…" he trails off, embarrassed by his own incompetent metaphors, but Wander's smile is brighter than ever, so he picks up the thread again. "And the old term for the star was 'second galaxy,' because the people believed it was the smaller moon. Something about the way light distorted around it made it look like it had a moon's phases before my – before people started making telescopes.

"And then…this kept happening, I guess. The puny war wasn't exactly the same as the big war, but eventually the same thing happened – the god of simplicity or whatever, the small version, he created an even smaller moon. Nine times in all. Or…eight? To make nine moons? Anyway, in the end there were nine moons."

He looks up, nothing left to say. It's not a very good ending and he knows it. Wander points at his own tightly-closed lips curiously; Hater nods.

"So does the war keep happening?" he blurts out as soon as his imaginary zipper is gone. "On down smaller and smaller into infinity?"

"Yes," Hater says, as self-assured as he can make it, though he remembers no such thing.

"That's like sayin' that for you guys even the atoms are at war," Wander muses, more curious than judgmental. "An' each moon is connected to a galaxy?"

"What?"

"You said 'nine galaxies.' Is each moon its own–"

"Ugh, I don't know. I told you it doesn't make any sense." He's angrier with himself than he has any right to be. Stupid. He had _known _he would tell a bad story. He shouldn't be surprised.

"I think," Wander says, "that every moon _is _like its own galaxy – or universe. They each had their own copies of the gods, right? Isn't that what makes a universe? That is, in a story where gods are in control." He turns his head politely to the side when he coughs.

"I think you're reading way too far into this."

"Mm! Well yeah, that's part of the fun! Sometimes the simplest stories are the ripest for exploration." He wiggles both arms out of the hat, folding them over his raised knees to form a chinrest. "You know what?"

"What?" Hater asks, reluctant to hear what Wander thinks of his storytelling abilities.

"I think that on the ninth moon there is no war."

Hater eyes him suspiciously. "Are you trying to change the ending because mine was boring?"

"'Course not! It's a little different for each person who tells it, remember? In my version, there's no war on the ninth moon. In your version, they go on down into infinity, and that's actually really beautiful. Tragic and bitter and beautiful."

Hater's eyes widen. "Beautiful" is not the word he would use, but Wander is looking at him with an impassioned sincerity that brooks no argument. He rubs at his knee through his robe, at a loss.

It feels good to be associated with a beautiful thing.

"I say that in my version there's no war on the ninth moon, 'cause you said events go a bit differently on each one. And I think that sometimes, even when you can't win the biggest wars, you can have your…intimate victories." He ducks his head, looking up at Hater from an almost demure angle. "And in your own little universe, those are gigantic."

"I don't see the point."

"Little things matter," Wander says, sitting up straight. "Little things matter a lot." He slides out of his hat; places it on his head as he stands.

"You'll get cold," Hater tells him, trying not to panic about Wander looking at him this way, standing on his own two feet.

"Yeah," he says, tone warm. "Hey Hater?"

"What?" he asks, a tense lump of something not entirely unpleasant forming in his throat.

"Why didn't you like it when I wore that bit of jewelry?"

The wind screams above them, forgotten until now like the end of an enchantment. Hater swallows.

"It was ugly," he hears himself say, and immediately feels that he's failed something.

There is a brief silence. Then Wander sighs with something like disappointment. "I guess so."

The space behind Hater's ribs constricts unpleasantly. He's screwing up again. It's not fair, because this is a game he doesn't know the rules to. But that's no excuse for someone as strong as him. Small victories are important, too.

"It was the wrong color for you," he says in a rush, a burning sensation unfurling up his cheeks, down his spine.

He steels himself for the plunge, then mumbles as though it's a simple afterthought: "And…I don't like that someone else gave it to you."

Wander blinks at him for a moment. Then a smile spreads across his face, the biggest Hater's ever seen, corner-to-corner happiness as he bounces on the balls of his feet.

"Hater!" he says, halfway between question and declaration, arms clasped behind his back.

"What?" Hater answers, voice wavering.

It feels like a ritual invocation. So do Wander's next words, simple and honest and full of intention. He balances on his heels, leaning forward over the ashes until Hater can see the barest hint of his short eyelashes. When he speaks, he sings.

"Can I play you a song?"

And it's like standing on the edge of a cliff and waiting to go over. Hoping wildly that a strong wind could push him into the abyss, but knowing full well that he has to take the step himself.

Wander smiles and smiles.

He opens his mouth and wills his voice to work. He feels the word vibrating in the back of his throat, building and forming itself out of nothing.

He thinks he says it, but it's impossible to tell. Hard to hear over the sudden sounds of clattering insectoid legs overhead.

They both freeze. The thing above them migrates rapidly towards the entrance, not wasting time. Each step seems huge and otherworldly, a premonition of everything Hater should have realized would go wrong. A creature sent to end something that never had a chance to begin.

He's on his feet before he has time to think. "Go to the corner," he says, "and get the knife."

Wander had come so close to him, so willingly.

Power blazes into his fists.


	8. The Knife

AHAHAHA...warnings for entomophobia, suffocation, violence, very slight blood, some self-hate, a generally pessimistic view of the world. To be fair, though, the violence is pretty sanitized. There is only so far I can go with a frickin WOY fanfiction.

* * *

The feelers come first.

This time they don't take long. They sweep the front of the cave, just as they did before, and find nothing. Hater holds still. He hears the slight sound of Wander skidding to a stop in the back of their little room, then a scrape that may be him picking something up.

He doesn't have time to worry about whether the sounds will give them away. As soon as the feelers have extended their furthest, they withdraw. Then the head comes into view.

The thing's giant face hangs over the crack, upside down at an angle that could have been comical if it weren't for the size of the fangs. It opens its mouth – _keeps _opening its mouth, like a jaw unhinging in four directions to eclipse the rest of its head. In one distressingly fluid motion it lunges at the entrance, but makes no attempt to come inside. Instead its fangs clamp down on the surrounding rock, covering the crack and leaving no light to see by except for Hater's hands.

It breathes, huge and slow, the sound like rumbling rocks. Sucking in their scent or issuing a warning. Throat like a black hole out of nowhere and leading to nowhere, blocking out the stars.

Hater fires three bursts directly into its gullet.

The beast is not dislodged. Its body, lit up in phases by green magic, seems to jolt from the concussive force of the blast, but either its fangs have an iron grip or it is simply too heavy to be shaken. Its responding call is not timid – like a roar, guttural, sending stinking air and bits of phlegminto their space. Hater can see the shine of black flesh in its maw.

He fires again and again. Targets the mouth that by all logic should be a weak spot with an attack that evokes no reaction besides an increase in its insidious breathing. Its legs on the roof tap smoothly over their heads, but the centipede body never moves far. It's already in a position it's determined to hold, looming over their safe haven like an invader from above. The cave smells alien and raw.

He pauses, gathers power into his palms, and lets loose one huge stream of energy – both hands extended in front of him, pointing at the thing like he can make it wither from shame alone. Lightning runs through every invisible line that holds him together, pushing out, pushing _away– _

Just as his legs start to shake, the thing pries its mouth off the rocks, pulling back as if to stare at him. The four-sided jaw snaps closed, leaving its insectoid face exposed – it has no eyes. Just the feelers, waving in the desert wind around its head.

He hears a sharp breath behind him. Not like fear. Like regaining something essential.

Panic explodes behind his eyes. How could he have forgotten something that's been so present, hanging over this cave like a shroud?

"Was it – it's trying to suffocate you!" His voice shakes. He doesn't dare look away from the bug.

"I'm okay," Wander says. "I'm–"

He fires at its enormous face, feeling his own outraged roar shake the walls.

It doesn't even bother to dodge. Exposed in the starlight, Hater can make out the exoskeleton that serves as the thing's gleaming armor, immune to everything he knows how to throw. The tendrils are returning, streaming into the cave like whips in slow motion.

The armor is plated. Pieced together tightly, but with thin lines between.

"Give me the knife," he says.

There is no hesitation. Wander offers it up instantly.

This time Hater takes it without question. (This time Wander's trust does not burn.)

With a jolt, he finds that the handle is covered in thin, raised lines that fit perfectly into the hollow joints of his hand. The weapon is exactly the right size for his grip, weight flawlessly balanced.

It slots into place the same time his understanding does.

Hater thinks: of course.

"I need you to run," he says very quietly, eyeing the feelers' fluid reach. The head is still waiting outside.

"Uh, I don't–"

"You can't fight this and you know it," he snaps. "You'll get in the way."

"I can't just up and _leave_ you!"

He chances a look back. Their eyes lock and it's exhilarating. Like stepping into the void on his own power. Freefall and flying.

"Listen to me," he says, and for once in his life he knows what he's going to say. "You weren't made to fight. It's _wrong _for you to fight. You're a – a noncombatant, alright? Don't you _dare _try to argue with me, you know it's true. Or are you gonna tell me that it's in your power to hurt something? That you could even _think _of doing that?"

He has never seen Wander so torn. His gaze flickers back and forth between Hater's face and the entranceway, and _there's _the fear that was missing – not for himself. Never. It's all for Hater.

The realization sends power surging to his fingertips a hundredfold. It electrocutes the knife, setting it ringing in tune with the rest of him.

Of course it does. The weapon is from his home planet, after all.

"Hater–" Wander chokes, the word already half-surrender, shoulders slumping in a way that makes every space beneath Hater's bones cry out for vengeance against the bug and its moon.

He pushes Wander back into the corner. In one messy stream he says, "I know what I'm doing I'll find you I swear don't go far." Then he turns and steps into the feelers' reach, standing tall at the front of the cave. Glaring the near-motionless creature down.

He blasts a hole in the roof. Lets the rocks and the sand and the bug come pouring down on top of him.

x

It takes him mere seconds to push his way out from under the stones and the body of his opponent, blasts of green energy speeding his work.

It takes longer to fight.

It's hard. The newly-formed pit is unsteady, composed of rubble and broken boulders constantly trying to meet in the middle. The wind is merciless, blowing sand into his eyes, his mouth, every crevice it can fight to hold.

But he knows what he's doing now. That wretched hat had a plan after all.

The knife, familiar in its design, helps him direct his power into narrow points, lasers honing in on the tight lines carved by nature in the bug's exoskeleton. When he scores a direct hit, knife passing within inches of the armor (or, when he is very lucky, sliding inside) the thing roars and thrashes like it can't control itself.

It's not how he likes to fight – he has to dance around the gaping maw and the fangs and the feelers (suddenly flash-fast, they cut like barbed wire). The long body, it turns out, is attached to a scorpion-like tail, which nearly catches him by surprise in a way he might not have been able to withstand.

He always hates having to dodge, and often fails. But he's taken worse hits than this.

When the tail smashes him to the ground with a vicious sideswipe, he howls, "This is my moon! I took it and _you can't have it!" _then gets up to fight again.

Because the hat would never give Wander a weapon. He's a noncombatant. This much is obvious to anyone with a brain.

Hater, on the other hand, is not so pure. His life is built on conquest, the power to bite down and dig in his heels and do what needs doing. It follows, then, that Hater can protect Wander using methods that Wander himself would never stoop to.

Maybe it's odd to feel that he has reached an understanding with a hat.

He slices at the crack under the insect's chin. The power that doesn't fit into the narrow opening ricochets as a cascade of sparks. The creature's pained bellowing shakes the sparse clumps of rock still hanging above them; pieces break off and slam against its armored back.

It grows angrier with time, and sloppier. Hater almost feels sympathetic.

By the end of the fight he is exhausted, tripping back and forth over his robe in his attempts to stay afloat. Wander would be pleased to know that there is no way he could really kill this creature – it's too strong and magic-resistant, and who knows how long it's been learning to survive. But he can feel it weakening with each penetration, slowing as he slows. Soon it's only a test of stubbornness, and Hater knows that he is unrivaled in his field.

The thing finally collapses to the ground, sending up a cloud of red dust thick enough to blind. When it clears, the bug has curled in on itself like a spiral shell, nursing its wounds. There are no visible injuries, which Hater takes as a personal insult, but at least it seems to have accepted defeat.

"You got lucky this time," he tells it, gripping the knife just in case. "You – you should know better than to mess with the _inimitable _Lord Hater, greatest in the galaxy! Don't get up if you know what's good for you!" Then he stumbles on a stone, fatigue nearly dragging him down to meet it on the ground.

The bug makes a noise that sounds like an affronted groan. Unfurls itself slowly and tenderly, as though sore. It turns its giant head away and begins to crawl, belly low to the ground, towards the flat horizon.

Hater figures that's good enough.

Now all that's left is to find Wander.

x

In theory, this is simple. In reality the task sends him roaming in endless circles around the ruins of their cave, hyping himself into a panic.

He had been explicit. He had said "don't go far." Maybe "far" means something else to a Nomad, but from where he's standing it looks like Wander just decided that Hater's orders weren't worth following.

Which is, of course, typical. (That should make him feel better. It doesn't.)

Maybe Sylvia has found him already, swooping in to steal Wander away while Hater fought to defend him. Maybe Wander resisted and she used her unnatural strength to carry him off the moon against his will. Maybe he went willingly, content not to have to put up with Hater's presence anymore.

Maybe he got lost somehow. Or fell into a pit. Or was thrown into outer space by another freak gravitational event. Or was buried in rubble when the cave fell (Hater had been so careful, he had _made sure). _

Or maybe telling him to run was a death knell, given his struggle to breathe.

Sometimes Hater is too stupid to live.

He moves faster, spiraling out from the cave site in concentric circles, trying to find tracks.

Finally, he thinks he sees something. Already dulled by the wind, it's more of a dip in the sand than a trail. He follows it regardless, nearly praying – his species keeps no gods now, but once upon a time there were nine galaxies.

Now there is another dip running parallel to it. Larger, like a shallow valley of sand.

Hater stumbles. Has to slow down and calm himself so he can think what to do. The insect went the opposite direction, he _knows _it did, so this is either some natural phenomenon or –

Or signs of another bug.

It closely shadows the smaller trail. The wind rips into them both, whittling away minute by minute at any chance Hater has of following, but a bug might be _following Wander._

There is nothing for it but to run.

Red sand burns his eyes.

(Red like brick, like the buildings on Trenelli 4, like the rusted waterfalls of Madorex–)

Soon he sees rock formations jutting out of the ground at odd angles, increasing in frequency as he moves forward. It looks like a disused graveyard, formed by nature then abandoned to the slow poison bite of the wind.

Nothing could live on this moon but evil things. Everything good will die.

He is so tired, but that doesn't matter now. Why did Wander go so _far?_

Eventually the wind destroys the trails. He is left with nothing to follow, so he moves straight forward, trying to keep his eyes open against the sand. A particularly unique stone catches his attention – cylindrical almost, and leaning, like a tower built on bad ground. It comes up to his waist.

It makes sense that next to this strange bit of landscape is where he sees the little body, sheltered by the overhang.

Something in him stutters and starts again.

He veers off course to approach, noting the orange coloration of the fur marred by a coat of red sand.

"Wander," he says. The body is lying on the ground, knees curled up towards the stomach.

Wander doesn't respond. For a moment Hater feels tendrils of despair unfolding against the edges of his consciousness.

Then, as Hater kneels down, robe already coated in the dust of this wretched place, Wander stirs – his fingers unclench, and he blinks up at Hater with a slow smile. Like waking up from a nap.

Relief floods his system. But as Wander gazes at him, glassy-eyed, he realizes that something is still wrong.

"Hiya Hater," he whispers, then immediately folds into himself for a coughing fit, face turned towards the dirt.

"You idiot," Hater says. He reaches out and, after the briefest hesitation, lays a hand on Wander's quaking shoulder. Wander looks up at him as though it's taking a great effort, eyelids lowered. His nose is bleeding. Nothing else is.

"You idiot, why did you go so far? You said – you said you shouldn't move around much! This isn't even a good hiding place! How did you…why…"

Wander makes a sound that might be a laugh. Hater's hand moves without conscious thought, fingertips brushing the Nomad's chin. Thumb resting against the corner of his mouth.

He's mumbling something; Hater leans closer to hear.

"–glad you…figured me out eventually. Was runnin' outta ways to be...subtle about you." He seems to be trying to yawn, but there's not enough air to rectify the deficit he brought on himself. To have gotten so far, so fast, he must have been running.

Hater tries to withdraw, but in one sloppy motion Wander reaches up and grabs onto his wrist. "'m glad they didn't get you," he says. Then his eyes slide shut and the hand falls.

And now it makes sense. Wander knew about the other bug. Maybe he saw it moving towards Hater as he was engaged with the first one. As great as Hater is, he couldn't have handled both at once. So Wander drew it off, further and further into the desert until he shook it off both of their trails. Until the air wasn't enough to maintain him.

It's terrifying: Wander is a noncombatant, but he knows how to save things without hurting other things. In this way he is stronger than Hater understands how to be.

Frantic, he presses one hand to Wander's chest and the other to his jugular. There's a pulse, but he has no way of knowing how strong it's supposed to be.

"This isn't right," he hears himself saying. "None of this makes sense, none of this was supposed to happen, it's not _right." _

Their obsessive orbits were not supposed to change. Circling each other was enough. They weren't supposed to crash into each other like moons falling down.

Behind him he hears insect legs moving over stone.

And he is so tired, but that doesn't matter now.

He turns to face the threat, drawing the knife out of his robe. It lights up with green energy (too dim, too weak, too tired).

This bug is bigger than the other one. From twenty feet away it stares him down, eyeless, jaws opening four ways to eclipse the rest of its head.

There's nothing left but to fight until he can't anymore. Hater positions himself in front of Wander's prone body, pressing a hand against the stone behind him for support. He can't dodge, or Wander will be exposed.

The thing roars and moves forward, scorpion tail thrashing.

Hater sees red.


	9. The Trio

Second-to-last chapter!

* * *

In waiting, everything slows.

The great thing's body kicks up red dust as it moves on a hundred legs. It climbs over the jutting stones like they're nothing more than flat ground. It roars again, and Hater feels himself dissociate: he is both hyper-vigilant, aware of every nuance in sound and sight and trembling earth, and absolutely detached from what surrounds him. There is no stopping this.

The future is screaming forward and he can't move aside. He feels Wander's presence behind him like the heat of a star.

He raises the knife, flat side level with the ground and glowing. Palm facing upwards like a twisted offering, fingers clenched tight around the black handle. Perhaps he will have time for a parting shot.

The bug comes close enough for him to see the crack in its breastplate. Hater fires off one burst that resonates through the knife to hone itself into something thin and sharp.

It misses.

Then there is no space between them, the repulsive body taking up his view of the sky. The feelers caress him, dragging over his bones like thorns. The front legs press down around him on the rock, surrounding him like eating him whole. The jaws open, wide and wide and descending. He can see down its dark throat (like a black hole, gone before it arrives) before he closes his eyes.

He is aware of warm weight forcing him to the ground, and an explosion of confused sound – the bug shrieking, the broad sound of metal slamming into metal, a shout, his name–

Then nothing. Nothing tearing into him or crushing him or swallowing him whole. He is on the ground, Wander's body behind him – he feels the fur brushing his arm, the knees touching his back, and thinks: maybe.

Maybe.

He opens his eyes. Noise exists again.

A blue blur moves past the bug, which recoils like it's been struck, howling. Laser fire lights up uselessly against its back, but it's enough of a distraction for the blue thing to come back again, this time leaping an impossible height to strike from above.

In the frozen moment before freefall Hater sees the blur resolve itself into features: a Zbornak swinging a fire extinguisher like a baseball bat, violence written on her face in plain language.

She smashes it into the back of the bug's head. The pure concussive force pushes its face into the ground, where it collides against the stone and recoils – painfully – into her backhand swing. She stands on its stubby neck and beats it, sinking into a vicious rhythm that sends its tail thrashing.

Before the stinger can harm her, a smaller figure leaps as though to tackle it – his weight isn't enough to do more than serve as a distraction, but it works. He is swung back and forth through the air, and Hater would recognize that half-terrified, half-ferocious yell anywhere.

"Peepers!" Hater shouts as though enraged. Really it's not anger that drives him: nothing in the universe makes sense anymore, and this is as good a fallback as any.

"Don't – worry – sir!" he makes out between the guttural roaring and the phaser blasts issuing at random from Peepers' gun. "I'll save you!"

Sylvia ducks a stray laser beam like it's second nature, clutching the bug's neck to swing down to the ground. She rolls with the momentum when she hits earth.

"Get _away_ from him!" she yells, and it takes Hater a moment to realize she's not talking to the bug.

"What?!" He pushes himself to his feet, using the rock for support. "I saved his _life!"_

Sylvia spares him a single look – somewhere between shock and skepticism – before dodging the tail (and a falling Peepers) to rush back into the fray.

Together they make short work of the thing.

Hater musters enough strength to fire a few bursts at the weak places, but nothing more. Sylvia, on the other hand, manages to do what he could not: the exoskeleton is resistant to his magic, but physical force to the degree she can muster produces terrifying results. The armored head, though formidable, dents under her concentrated assault. She is tireless, and fierce, and endlessly protective. She could fight a planet and win.

The bug follows the same surrender ritual the other had: first it drops and curls into itself, trembling. Then it unfolds and moves towards the horizon, dragging its enormous body through the dirt. No one stops it. It dwindles away into nothingness, swallowed by abandoned sand.

Then the four are alone. Three of them stand, for a moment, in the wind.

Sylvia turns first. She drops the extinguisher and moves towards Wander, coolly meeting Hater's gaze. He feels a spark of fear run down his spine, but there is an unmistakable challenge in her indifference, so he maintains eye contact.

"Are you alright, sir?" Peepers asks, a note of panic in his voice. For the first time, Hater fully takes in the fact that he is standing on Sylvia's back.

"Why are you riding a Zbornak?" he hears himself say.

Sylvia snorts. "Trade you."

With an expert buck she sends the Watchdog flying towards Hater's head. He raises a hand to catch him, face-first, like a baseball in a mitt. "Sir!" Peepers splutters through the glove. Hater unceremoniously drops him to the ground. His attention is elsewhere.

As soon as Sylvia is free of her passenger, her pace increases exponentially; suddenly she's at Wander's side, picking him up like he weighs no more than a pillow. _"Buddy,"_ she says, and he registers the urgent note in her voice – the way one hand moves to find his pulse, unknowingly tracing the path Hater had taken not twenty minutes before.

"He's alright," he says. Then: "Is he alright? I wasn't – I don't know how that's supposed to be, is he supposed to be stronger? It's just the air, he kept telling me the air wasn't good and I didn't listen well enough, so I made him run – I mean, I didn't stop him from running, I didn't…"

Sylvia isn't listening. She stretches her neck out over Wander in an embrace, holding him close to her chest. When she breathes a sigh of relief, Hater feels tension he didn't know he was holding flow out from his shoulders, shuddering through his skull and sending shocks of weakness to his knees.

Some of the violence has seeped out of the wind. He can feel Peepers staring at him, but he doesn't turn.

"I'm taking him to your ship," she says. "He just needs recovery time." Her fingers press into his fur in a way that makes something in Hater ache – there is an incredible bond there, neither maternal nor romantic nor anything else he can find the words for. He has no equivalent.

"I can carry him," he says. The words come out more quietly than he intended. He doesn't understand what's happening, but apparently some part of his ship is un-wrecked enough to help Wander. That's all he needs to know.

Sylvia gives him a long, level look that makes his fingers twitchy. Like she's trying to divine everything that's happened today from his four simple words: what's changed, and what has to stay the same.

"No," she says. Not angry or defensive or scared. Just definitive. She places Wander, with infinite tenderness, on her back, pulling his arms around her neck where she can grip his hands with her own. "You can take Peepers, though. Because of the air thing."

He notices the harshness of her breath, but no other signs of weakness. She is so impossibly strong.

"Sorry, sir," Peepers mumbles from below. "I did my best, but Sylvia – uh, the merciless criminal Sylvia – had to carry me a lot of the way so I didn't use up my energy. Not that I would have fainted! I am one hundred percent _above _fainting! But, I mean, you have to use your surroundings to your advantage in combat, and I figured that, given the circumstances–"

"Peepers," Hater sighs. He stows the knife and awkwardly holds out his arms. His commander looks up at him in surprise; Hater can't quite bring himself to make eye contact.

"Uh. Thank you sir," Peepers says, and clambers up. After a moment of awkward deliberation, wherein Peepers ends up cradled like an infant in his arms, Hater lifts him up to perch on his shoulder. He clings very tightly to Hater's hooded head. Hater hopes that for his sake Peepers realizes how completely and totally off-limits this story is going to be tomorrow.

They leave the extinguisher behind. Sylvia eyes it like a memory she'd prefer not to have – Hater doesn't want to know what it would have been like to arrive at the rubble of a collapsed cave, signs of combat all around and no way to tell who was lost.

She holds Wander close on her back, laid out against her neck for support. Their fingers are entwined.

His face is peaceful under the dirt – eyes sweetly closed, face turned towards Hater (who walks at Sylvia's side). He can't tear his eyes away for more than a minute. He stumbles on rocks more than once, feeling Peepers' fingers digging into his hood.

He knows Sylvia notices. He just can't stop.

"How did this happen?" he finally asks to break the silence. He gestures to Sylvia, then to Peepers.

"I could ask you the same thing," Sylvia replies. Her tone is utterly, purposefully neutral. Hater swallows.

"It was an alliance of convenience," Peepers cuts in (for which Hater is disturbingly grateful). "I found this reprobate while she was looking for Wander. No one could find you or the ship, and everybody thought it had something to do with the weird magnetic field – erm, we sort of had our own trouble with that."

"We figured since neither of us had any idea what was going on we should at least _try _to work together," Sylvia grumbles. "And then once we figured out _why _those fluctuations were happening, we had to convince Artellus to tell us where he sent you two. And then to send _us _there as well."

"Wait," Hater demands, tripping a bit on his robe. "You're – what do you mean '_he.'"_

"Oh, yeah. Artellus is a living planet. Pretty cool dude actually, once you convince him you're not out to hurt his inhabitants. Plays a mean hand of poker."

Hater closes his eyes and counts to five very slowly.

"Sir?" Peepers asks timidly.

"Do not," he says, staring out at what may be the wreckage of his ship on the horizon, "let Wander know any of that. I will dole out personal, _excruciating _punishment to anyone who lets Wander know that Artellus is a living planet."

Sylvia raises an eyebrow. "Oookay. I think I've missed something. Wanna fill me in here?"

"It's not important," Hater says, trying not to sound defensive. "We were just stuck in the same miserable cave."

Sylvia looks startled. Then, inexplicably, her expression turns sly. "Really. You and Wander."

"Yes, me and Wander. What's the big deal?"

"It explains a lot, is all." She cranes her neck back to look at her charge, expression going gentle around the edges. "Oh man. I keep tryin' to tell you, pal." Hater almost can't pick up her soft words over the wind. "The universe is _totally _in love with you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" A growing discomfort scratches at his ribcage.

"Alright, listen up," she says, her attention snapping back to Hater with frightening velocity. Her eyes are stern, but the smirk playing around her mouth is unmistakable. "I'll admit I was the first person to oppose all this. But if Wander's happy, I'm happy. When he's _this sure_ of something, stuff tends to work itself out. I'm taking today as proof of that."

"What?"

"Honestly, I know you don't need to hear the speech. I'm sure you're aware that if you hurt him in _any _way, glorn help me, I will _ruin _you. I will–"

"Wait, stop it, what are you _talking _about? What's – you can't _threaten_ me!"

"Yeah!" Peepers adds like an overzealous shoulder parrot.

"Ooohhhh, you better _believe_ I can threaten you. Wander is important, got it?"

"I know that!" he snaps. "But we're not – what do you think is happening here?"

"It's not hard to figure out!" she says, adjusting her grip on Wander's hands. "He's only been talking about you nonstop since you two met! Then you get stuck in some moon cave together for hours on end, no _way _he's gonna pass up the chance to…"

She trails off, doing a double take to peer into Hater's face. "Wait. Wait, are you trying to tell me nothing _happened _between you two?"

Peepers makes an affronted sound. "Of course not! This is _the _Lord Hater, greatest in the galaxy! There's no way he would–"

"Shut up Peepers," Hater and Sylvia say simultaneously. They blink at each other in surprise.

Hater clears his throat. The sand isn't so frenzied on the wind anymore, but the back of his mouth still tastes like dirt. "No. Nothing happened. I mean. Nothing…there wasn't any – everything was very normal. I mean. Not normal for us, but normal for other people." He feels his face growing hotter with every word.

This does not escape Sylvia's attention. "So Wander didn't indicate _any _interest in you beyond that," she says, flat and suspicious.

"Well near the end there was – I mean, some of the things he said could have been interpreted as – look, he wasted the whole time telling _stories,_ how was I supposed to–"

"Stories?" She smiles like she can't believe what she's hearing. "What stories did he tell?"

"Just…random crap! Stuff about a prince and a builder-girl, and relationships between planets, and a Nomad that stole moons."

"Are you _serious?" _she breathes, and for a moment Hater is gratified that someone is as bewildered as he is until she fires off: "And you didn't read _anything_ into those?"

He blinks. "They were just–"

"He told you stories! About relationships! About love! About asking people to travel with you! Trust me, I _know_ these stories, and you are _incredible _to have missed the memo on this!" She looks genuinely offended now, interrupting their walk to stare him down like he's just dunked her bridle in swamp water.

Hater comes to a standstill, trying to regain control of his jaw. "I – you – well why couldn't he have just _said _something? This was the most stupid, roundabout–"

"Would you have _listened?!" _she cries. "I kept tellin' him that you think of him as an _enemy, _so he had to do it more subtly! What would you have done if he'd just…pulled out a banjo and started singing you a love song?! Which exists, by the way. He totally wrote you a love song."

Hater has never flushed so hard in his entire life. He feels every inch of him turning a verdant green, from his cheeks down to each individual phalange.

"How was I supposed to know that?!" he hollers, taking a step towards Sylvia; Peepers nearly falls off behind him.

Sylvia doesn't back down, raising her neck to look him in the eye. "It is a _courting ritual," _she says, annunciating each syllable like a throwing star.

Hater hopes the pit re-opening in his torso swallows him whole.

"I didn't–"

"Oh hey, Hater!" she says, tone mock-excited, "I've got a new story, and I'm gonna tell it just for you. Are you ready? It goes like this: Once upon a time. You are an _idiot._ The end."

"_You can't call me–"_

"He's cold," she says, and just like that, the conversation is over.

Hater can see Wander shivering beneath his fur. Sylvia cranes her neck back to press her chin briefly against his head. "Let's just get him somewhere warm. We'll argue about the rest later."

"Where?" Hater scowls, forcing down the coil of panic trying to creep up on him again. "This place is a wasteland."

"Sir," Peepers says. His tone is delicate, as though testing the waters of a conversation he's not sure he wants to be a part of. "Artellus…graciously agreed to send up a Watchdog repair crew. They should be working on the ship as we speak."

Sylvia snorts. "My royal flush versus his four of a kind. That was a close hand." She is smiling slightly, though she ducks her head to make it hard for Hater to see.

After a moment of silence, Hater asks: "How did the conquest go?"

Peepers stutters a string of random syllables that amounts to "it didn't." Living planets very nearly count as divine intervention, so Hater isn't as upset as he thought he'd be.

"You did well, Commander," he admits. Over Peepers' excited squeak, he adds: "We'll just come back to crush it later." The remnants of the ship rise before them, covered in scurrying Watchdogs wielding laser welders. A tattered flag stands before it all, bearing Hater's crest. It feels like so long ago that he had stumbled away from here, plunging the pole into dirt like it was second nature. "At least I've got the moon."


	10. Epilogue

I want to thank EVERYONE who's stuck this story out til the end. Your encouragement and input means the world to me, and it's been a thrill to write for you.

Now all that's left is for you to enjoy the fluff. Go ahead. Reap your reward.

* * *

The lead of the repair crew informs Hater that they've managed to restore full oxygen levels to a corridor's worth of rooms near the ship's center. Sylvia doesn't wait, ducking past burnt metal overhangs and piles of rubble to climb into the ruined vessel. Hater forces himself to hear out the rest of the report, but he makes his impatience obvious in the set of his jaw and the glare with which he fixes the Watchdog. The account is brief and terrified.

When it's over he follows. Peepers remains outside to oversee the repairs – his shrill yells follow Hater down into the remaining outer layers of his ship.

It's a sad sight. Everything is smashed to pieces and covered in sand.

He wonders as he makes his way down a slightly slanted corridor (gravity stabilizers are not yet online, and the ship landed lopsided) whether he should keep the knife. And if so, where? His personal weapons room is the obvious choice, but in most situations such a small, basic armament would be of no use to him. It was only the uniqueness of the bug's physiology that had made it worth anything at all. On his home planet it would have been used for training purposes only: when someone is born with strong magic, it can be hard to control during childhood. Having a conduit is important, at least until a more subtle coping mechanism is drilled into the psyche. Gloves, for example.

In some ways this creates a weakness; gloves can be lost or removed. But it's worth it if you can know the shape of the thing that makes you lose control. Give it a name.

He has to pass through an airlock to get to the secure corridor. The indicator light on the wall is red, so he waits in the small box of a room (much cleaner than the prior hallway) for oxygen levels to rise. On the other side of the door he hears people speaking.

"'M still feelin' a bit fuzzy." The voice, vague and gentle, makes Hater's heartspace stammer.

"Take it easy, buddy," Sylvia says. "We've gotta get you cleaned up."

"Where's…?"

"He's around. He'll be here. Are you–"

"He's…mm."

"Hey. Hey, you passing out on me again?"

"I'm still pretty sleepy."

"That'll happen."

"Tell 'im…when he gets here, tell 'im…"

"Tell him yourself."

The light turns green. The doors slide open before Hater has time to be nervous.

"Wander," Sylvia says. She's still holding the Nomad to her chest; his eyes are closed.

"Tell 'im he's gotta…ask…" The words slur into incomprehensibility, then drop off entirely.

Sylvia looks up at Hater and ruefully shakes her head. "Out like a light. You just missed 'im."

"I know." He steps out into the hallway.

"He's already better," Sylvia says, pressing a hand to Wander's forehead. "Breathing easy, you know?" She stands with her feet planted wide in the middle of the corridor. She and Wander are like twin points of colored light against the dark walls.

Hater grunts noncommittally. He can make out traces of blood marring the fur beneath Wander's nose. Next he takes in all the dirt coating the little body and tastes nausea on his tongue.

He could have done so much more.

It takes him some time to tear his eyes away and notice Sylvia examining him. "What?" he asks defensively.

"He says you kept him alive." Her expression is hard to interpret: the suspicion seems dulled in favor of a sullen sort of wonder. "I guess…if that's true, I guess I owe you one."

His eyes stray again to Wander's face; the way it cradles so naturally against Sylvia's fur.

"So _now _you admit it," he says.

Sylvia scoffs and adjusts Wander's weight. Then she holds him out to Hater, like offering an infant to cradle.

Hater swallows, feeling panic run down through his fingers. "What–"

"Is there a bathroom in this place?" Sylvia asks. Her smile is subtle, but present. "One with a shower, preferably. You both stink."

Hater eyes her for a moment longer, then reaches out. The moment of transfer is energizing, the feather-light weight of Wander's body puzzlingly warm. He pulls him closer; Wander fits snugly against his chest in a way that makes his rib cage feel full to bursting. The air at his core is as light as the Nomad.

Sylvia looks at him smugly. "Get him clean," she says. "I'll be close by."

x

The bathtub fills slowly, but really it's a miracle that any of the pipes work at all. The room is small and white; the hat stands out boldly where it rests on the sink's marble counter. Hater shuts off the water before it can slosh over the slanted side.

It's with some reluctance that he loosens his grip to lower Wander into the bubbles (testing first to make sure the water isn't too hot). He holds the small body carefully so it doesn't slip under, kneeling on the floor outside the tub to support Wander's torso.

Wander makes a tiny, adorable noise. Drowsily rubs at his eyes. "Mmm," he groans. "That's nice."

Hater flushes. He opens his mouth, hoping to find a response ready-made there, but nothing comes.

Wander is still, and without being able to see his face Hater thinks he's gone back to sleep, head drooping towards the water's surface.

Then he feels a tiny hand wrapping around his finger.

His brain stalls, skipping to a stop amidst a heady cloud of bath scents (a heartbeat beneath the palm of his hand).

Wander cranes his neck back to look at him. His upside-down smile is soft and familiar. "Hi there," he says.

And Hater feels a rush of things he didn't know he could experience. Something deep blue, arching over them like a shelter and a horizon and a crashing tide.

He screws his eyes shut. Leans down and presses his mouth, stiff and defiant, to Wander's lips. Heat rises off the water and condenses on his exposed cheeks.

He hears Wander move beneath him. For an awful second the contact is broken, then the lips return in earnest, right-side-up this time – their sizes are mismatched, so Wander plants kisses all along the sharp line of his mouth. One hand comes to rest at the back of Hater's hood, pulling him closer; the other presses possessively against Hater's chest.

Time stretches out between them, each striking second an age. Wander's wet hand traces Hater's jaw line, marking every space he touches with moisture. Hater lowers himself to his haunches so they are face-to-face. He reaches up to cup the back of Wander's slim neck, feeling the unbending pieces of himself loosen and slide away. Movement becomes natural. He knows where to put his hands, when to part Wander's lips with the slight pressure of his tongue.

It feels so good to collide, and to give the collision a name.

An epoch passes before Wander breaks away. Hater can't help the noise that escapes him, low and fraught.

Wander laughs and stands up, putting him just above Hater's kneeling height with the help of the raised tub. He presses their foreheads together, slinging his arms around Hater's neck. His eyes are big and open and not inscrutable at all. "Now there's dirt in my mouth," he declares.

"That's all you have to say?" Hater responds. He's lost control of his jaw again – he feels the lines of his face tilting upwards instead of down. Eye contact at this range should be uncomfortable, but it's not.

"Well, it's not _all _I've gotta say." Wander pulls away, letting his fingertips linger last, tracing along Hater's shoulders. "But we sure are a sorry sight, the two of us."

It's true – Wander's face is still mostly dry and sandy, despite the quickly browning water around him. Hater wets his hand, then shoves it at Wander's cheek, scrubbing hard. Wander squeals, tripping backwards to fall with a splash that soaks the front of Hater's robe. He surfaces with a splutter and the most perfect laugh Hater has ever heard.

"Fair's fair!" Wander shrieks, stumbling to his feet. He jumps in place, pulling up his knees in midair to create cannonball waves.

Now it's Hater's face that's soaked. He closes his eyes against the suds and makes indignant noises. "How _dare _you!" he thunders, slamming his hands down against the tub's rim.

Wander laughs and laughs. Covers Hater's hands with his own.

x

It takes him awhile to realize he is tired.

The Watchdogs bring him food from the half-repaired court; he eats it sitting in a fold-out chair in the secure corridor. Wander wolfs down candy and pizza next to him, occasionally sticking straws in his nose and making bad puns.

Somehow Hater falls asleep there. He wakes up half an hour later to find Wander curled up in his lap, one hand clutching the front of his robe. His breathing is peaceful. Hater slides back into dreams.

The next time he wakes Wander is sprawled even further, arms draped around Hater's neck and face pressed into his collarbone, snoring gently. He tries not to think about how naturally his own arms have moved to compensate.

Then with a jolt he notices Sylvia sitting in Wander's vacated chair. Her expression is thoughtful.

"You better know what you're doing," she tells him.

"Of course–" Hater starts to snap before lowering his voice. "Of course I do."

"Who am I kidding?" Sylvia says with a chuckle. "You have no idea. Whatever, you'll figure it out. Probably. I mean, it's for your own good that you do."

They sit in silence for awhile. Wander exists between them like the clasp of a silver chain.

x

Wander and Sylvia stay to aid the repair effort. Hater makes a show of grumbling about it, of course, but none of the Watchdogs besides Peepers actually object. Everyone seems honestly glad for the help. Sylvia has her unnatural strength, and Wander has a gift for making the workload seem light.

When Hater's not overseeing the process, he finds excuses to sneak away with Wander. Peepers covers for him – he may not be sold on this whole turn of events, but he knows when his overlord wants privacy (and tends to be good at providing it).

Soon the outer hull is completed. Everyone is inside reconstructing the control room when Wander pulls Hater away by the hand, leading him out of the ship towards the flag planted in the dirt.

"I'm real glad we got this chance," Wander says. He grabs onto the thin pole and leans away, letting the flag support his weight as he spins in slow circles around it. "I mean, besides the part where your entire ship got smashed to pieces an' Sylvia worked herself into a panic an' we nearly died."

"Yeah, besides all that," Hater says dryly. His words are more sarcastic than he feels.

"Where y'all headed off to next?" Wander asks, not slowing his spin.

Hater considers this, a sinking sensation growing at his core.

It's not that he hasn't thought about the next step. Wander is a traveler, and not one that can move at the deliberate pace of a conquering army in the comfort of a mothership. He has to be able to roam free. Hater knows this. He's known from the beginning.

"Aww, why the long face?" Wander asks. He stops and leans against the flag, hands behind his back. His expression is teasing, but with sincerity burning warm beneath.

"When are you leaving?" Hater manages gruffly, averting his eyes.

There is a brief pause before Wander says, "I reckon we'll take off not long after you do."

For a moment Hater nearly turns and goes back inside. He doesn't know how to give a name to what's overwhelming him, much less how to hide it.

Then he thinks about stories. A Nomad who is punished for stealing moons away without their permission.

Wander just can't be the one to ask.

"Listen to me," he commands, forcing the words out before he has time to reconsider. "Would it be – do you think–"

Wander immediately straightens, standing at attention before him. He vibrates with an incommunicable excitement, eyes wide. Above them the sun is rising around the planet, promising renewed warmth and light.

Hater recollects himself. He snarls, thrusting a finger out at the Nomad. _"You," _he says, "are going to come back soon, do you hear me? And you are going to _take me with you_ somewhere. Am I getting through your thick, miserable skull? That's an _order. _We're going on a side trip."

Wander almost looks lost. Something inexpressible has pushed past the logical arrangement of his facial features, leaving him passive and exposed. Hater thinks he can read an entire history written onto that moment. He wonders in horror if Wander is going to cry.

Then an exuberant squeal pierces the air and his arms are full of Wander and there are kisses being peppered all over his face.

"Yes yes _yes," _Wander murmurs between each peck. He frantically pulls down Hater's hood, moving to kiss the place where his jaw hinges. The base of his horn. The space where his pulse would be. Then back to his mouth again. "We'll see so many amazing things! We'll do it together; you won't regret it."

And all Hater can do is kiss back, finally catching Wander's lips. He slows them down, running his fingers through the short fur at the back of Wander's head. Letting no air between their bodies.

When Wander breaks away he's gasping – the cough tells Hater that they really shouldn't be doing this out_ here, _where Wander can't speak and sing and dance the way he wants to.

Which reminds him.

"Hey, you owe me a song!" he says, indignant. "Don't think you can get away with that. It's _mine."_

The flag curls and unfurls as the wind picks up. The sun shines bright over Artellus' shoulder.

"Don't you worry your head about that," Wander says, the joy in his face writ large. "We've got time. There's so much to talk about when you're on the open road!"

Hater doesn't know what he's gotten himself into, but he has a feeling that life will be structured in chapters from now on: absences and reunions, long-distance letters, orbits that cycle back to start. Going on short adventures. Small, personal victories like gods in the ninth galaxy.

There is no good reason that two moons cannot take each other.

Red sand threads itself between them.

"Let's go inside," Wander says, grinning. "We've got so many tales to spin."


End file.
